I hate coffee, but I couldn’t help but be impressed with this Frothy Coffee Cappuccino Cake my boyfriend made as his second ever cake for Mother’s Day (he made his first cake last year).

He adjusted this recipe from Good Food magazine to skip the walnuts for extra froth and used Tesco Finest Costa Rican coffee because of the chocolate and spice notes of the blend. The Good Food recipe calls for light soft brown sugar, but in future I’d be tempted to mix this with muscovado for a richer coffee colour on the cake. The recipe as Jon made it is below:

Ingredients

• 250g pack butter, softened
• 250g soft brown sugar plus 5 tbsp extra for drizzle and icing
• 300g self-raising flour
• 4 eggs
• 200ml strong cold coffee (Tesco Finest Costa Rican worked well)
• 500g tub mascarpone
• cocoa powder or drinking chocolate to decorate

 Method

1. Pre-heat the fan oven to 160c
2. Cream together the butter and 250g of sugar before adding the eggs, flour and half the coffee. Divide this evenly between two greased and lined sandwich tins and bake for 25 mins.
3. Mix the left over coffee with 3 tbsp of sugar and when the cake has cooled, drizzle 2 tbsp of the mixture on each half of the cake.
4. Cream together the marscapone, left over coffee and 2 tbsps of sugar, using half the mixture to sandwich the sponge layers and half to top the cake before dusting with the cocoa powder for a frothy coffee look.