Coffee Cake Recipe

Solo baking time! This time it's coffee cake, courtesy of Mary Berry.

Step 1: assemble ingredients:

 Serves 8

225g (8oz) very soft butter, plus more for the tins

225g (8oz) light muscovado sugar or caster sugar

225g (8oz) self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder
4 large eggs
4 level tsp instant coffee, dissolved in 1 tbsp boiling water

Step 2: Realise you don't have any eggs so go out and buy some at your local corner shop. Casually browse around until you deduce that they don't sell eggs since they are not situated around any of the other dairy products or home baking ingredients so you politely ask. Get snippy directions to the obtuse location of the eggs since apparently putting them under the magazines at a height only your ankles could appreciate is clearly the obvious place. Return home grumpy but still optimistic about your cake.

Step 2.5: Think of witty comeback to corner shop lady only after you are halfway back home. Feel simultaneously smug and defeated since the moment has passed.

Step 3: Realise you don't have any unsalted butter moments before setting foot back in your kitchen with your eggs. Get too embarrassed to return to the corner shop so bite the bullet and walk to the closest supermarket cursing the entire way. 

Step 4: Consider origami as a viable means of using greaseproof paper to line a baking tray since you have never used greaseproof paper before. Give up half-way and decide you would have more fun making cake mix.

Step 5. Make cake and butter icing.
(Pro Tip: Make sure to lick as much cake mix and icing before committing it to the cake.)

Step 6: Wish that you spent more time perfecting the greaseproof paper...

Step 7: Assure housemates that although it looks like a rabid oyster with the bubonic plague it is actually quite scrumptious. (If you turned some people off wanting a portion using that analogy then result - more cake for you!)

Step 8: Consume.


In all seriousness, the cake did come out tasting a lot better than it looks and I am quite pleased with it. If you want to make a coffee cake of your own then I recommend this tried and true recipe. The butter icing especially is to die for.