Coffee Almond cake

This week, a friend was turning 50. Given the Corono virus scare, we have been observing self isolation, quite seriously. So we baked this coffee cake and topped it with chocolate frosting . Some old hung curd icing was put in a piping bag to do this minimalist decoration. We are novices at cake decoration you see! Recipe for the frosting is already available on this blog. You can access it here. Below I am sharing the recipe of this cake. It is similar to a pound cake- rich and dense. This recipe is a slight modification of the recipe available at the blog of Joy Of Baking. You can access that here.

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups of all purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 3/4 cup of white granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup of powdered jaggery/brown sugar/shakkar
• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup of soft butter
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup of skimmed milk
• 1/4 cup of cream (I used Amul cream)
• 2 heaped tablespoons of instant coffee powder dissolved in half a cup of boiling water
• 1/2 cup of roughly chopped almonds

Recipe

1. Preheat the oven at 180 degrees.
2. Mix all the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda) in a bowl. Use a whisk or pass all the ingredients through a sieve.
3. Cream the butter with a hand mixer. Add white sugar to it and beat for couple of minutes. Do all this at medium speed
4. Add eggs one at a time while beating in between- Again at medium speed.
5. Start adding dry mixture, keeping the hand mixer at low speed. Do it in three batches alternating with liquids. One time add milk and cream mixture and the second time add the coffee water. End it with the dry mix.
6. Mix in the vanilla essence.
7. Fold walnuts in.
8. Transfer the mix to a greased and lined baking tin. Place it in the oven while the rack is in the middle with Bothe lements on.
9. Bake for 25 minutes. Do check in between once. If the top gets dark too soon, cover the tin with aluminium foil. You can even put the top element off for a while.
10. After 25 minutes check by passing a knife through it. If not comes clean, the cake is ready.
11. Cool it on a wire rack. Unmould the cake.
12. Decorate it with the frostings. Recipe for the both types of frostings is available on the blog here and here.