Coffee carrot cake

This is another recipe from Harry Eastwood’s Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache. I still don’t really get this book. It’s ostensibly got a diet angle, but replacing the flour in your cakes with rice flour and vegetables isn’t exactly slimming when you’re still liberally using sugar. But anyway, for people like me who like to eat well without agonising over every bite, this is a rather lovely cake.

I do not like coffee. I’ve never drunk coffee – well, bar one experiment as a child, where I added several spoons of sugar, and held my nose as I didn’t like the smell. I still don’t particularly like the smell, but I have a soft spot for coffee cake, on occasion. It reminds me of visiting my grandparents in Kew when I was about four.

This one was made for the 70th of my father-in-law, Bryan. We got stuck in on Friday, and, in a semi-coincidence, visited Kew on the Saturday. I’ve not been there for about 35 years, and even saw the cafe that had abided in my mind’s eye as the origin of the coffee walnut cakes.

Anyway, Eastwood calls this “Coffee and Walnut Courage Cake”. But really it’s just a carrot cake disguised as a coffee and walnut cake. Carrot cake is traditionally flavoured with cinnamon and possibly iced with a lemony cream-cheese icing, but this cake proves there really is no reason to not cake it other directions.

The mixture doesn’t rise terribly well, so this does really need the size of cake tins Eastwood specifies: two 18cm diameter, 5cm deep jobs, preferably loose-bottomed. Greased and lined.

Preheat oven 180C.

200g rice flour
120g walnuts
3 eggs
160g light muscovado sugar
250g of finely grated carrot
2t baking powder
1/4t salt
5T coffee essence.

Quick discussion of the coffee essence. The book says “5 tbsp (125ml)”. This is a little confusing as 1T = 15ml, so 5T = 75ml.

Also – why worry about “coffee essence”. You’re more likely to have real or instant coffee in your kitchen already, so just make a bunch of strong coffee, filter it if it’s got grains, then reduce it.

Anyway. Whizz up the nuts and flour in a processor.
Beat the eggs and sugar, preferably with an electric hand blender, for about 3 minutes, until smooth and increased in volume.
Beat in the baking powder, salt, and coffee, then also add the carrot and flour/nut mix. Mix by hand until evenly blended.

Divide mixture into tins and bake 30 mins. Cool for 10 mins in tins, then remove and allow to cool completely.

Icing:
50g unsalted butter
250g icing sugar
75g mascarpone
Slug of strong coffee

Soften the butter with hand blender, then add the mascarpone and coffee. Sieve in the icing sugar, and mix by hand to stop it flying everywhere. You can give it a buzz with the hand blender when it’s combined to make it extra smooth and creamy. Cool in the fridge for 15 mins before using the sandwich and ice the cooled cakes.

Decorate with walnut halves.