Baking: Coffee Streusel Cake

 

Difficulty: Medium

 

Ingredients:
For the Sponge:

• Butter, for greasing
• 275g of plain flour
• 1 tablespoon of baking powder
• 75g of caster sugar (this isn't a lot and the cake isn't sweet, so if you want to add more to suit your sweet tooth then go ahead!)
• 150ml of milk
• 2 eggs
• 100g of butter, melted and cooled (it's very important that the butter has properly cooled!)
• 2 tablespoons of instant coffee mixed with one tablespoon of boiling water (or add more coffee if you want the taste to be stronger)
• 50g of almonds, chopped
• Icing sugar for dusting

 

For the topping:

• 75g of self-raising flour
• 75g of demerara sugar
• 2 tablespoons of butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 teaspoon of ground mixed spice
• 1 tablespoon of water

Method

1. Grease a 23cm/9 inch loose-bottomed roud cake tin with a little butter and line the base with baking paper
2. Pre-heat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5
3. Sift the flour and baking powder into a large mixing bowl and then stir in the caster sugar
4. Whisk the milk, eggs, melted butter and coffee mixture together and pour into the dry ingredients
5. Add the chopped almonds and mix lightly together until a cake mix is formed
6. Spoon the mixture into the tin - don't put it into the oven yet!
7. To make the topping, mix toether the SR flour and demerara sugar
8. Add the butter and mix together with your fingers until the mix is crumbly
9. Sprinkle in the ground mixed spice and the water
10. Bring the mixture together into loose crumbs - this is the tricky bit, and you might have to use a knife. Don't worry if the mix is too stodgy, just keep adding small amounts of SR flour until the mix is less stodgy. Mine wasn't really dry, but as long as it's a little crumbly in texture it should be fine
11. Sprinnkle the topping evenly over the surface of the cake mixture in the tin
12. Bake the cake in the pre-heated oven for one hour - keep an eye on the topping and if it's browning too quickly, cover it loosely with tin foil
13. After it is baked, leave to cool thoroughly in the tin, then turn out - don't forget to take the greaseproof paper off the bottom of the cake!
14. Dust with icing sugar to finish