I should really start calling this series of challenges “Cooking with Coffee,” but that’s not important right now.

Today I made a Coffee Cake, but not just any Coffee Cake. I made an Espresso Coffee Coffee Cake. What does that even mean? Well, there’s brewed espresso in the batter and in the icing. It’s a delicious and beautifully caffeinated thing, which I have a hilarious story about, but I’ll tell you that after I share this recipe.

So, with my imagination excited, and a significant amount of caffeine already in my system, I used Café La LLave to make a Coffee Coffee Cake that should bring a joyful tear to any Cuban or lover of espresso. That’s right COFFEE Coffee Cake. Imagínate tu!

It’s a Bundt cake, so you’ll need a large Bundt pan to begin with.

Espresso Coffee Coffee Cake

INGREDIENTS

Streusel

• ¾ cup walnuts or pecans (Full Disclosure: we have too many nut sensitive people in our fam, so we make it without the nuts and it’s just fine.)
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon

Cake

• 3 ⅓ cups all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• ¾ cup buttermilk
• ¾ cup strong coffee (cold) – This is the spot where the Café La Llave Espresso comes in. I brew it before I start baking and refrigerate it for a while and it’s just right.
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter (softened)
• 1 ¾ cup sugar
• 3 large eggs

Glaze

• ¼ cup strong coffee (again, “strong” is code for “espresso.”)
• 2 ½ cups powdered sugar sifted

INSTRUCTIONS

• Start by brewing a very strong cup of coffee (I’m talking about Café La Llave Espresso, of course) and cool it off in the fridge before continuing.
• Finely chop your pecans or walnuts or pulse them a few times in a food processor.  Then mix them with the cinnamon and sugar to finish the streusel.  Set aside for later. Again, you can skip the nuts and it will still taste just fine.
• Combine all your dry ingredients for the cake and mix together.

• Combine the cold strong coffee with the buttermilk and vanilla and whisk together.  Set aside.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and if you’re using a bundt pan, lightly butter it and dust it with flour so your cake will come out easily.
• Using a stand mixer or hand mixer, beat together the sugar and soft butter until light and fluffy.  About 5 minutes with a stand mixer or 10 minutes with a hand mixer.

• Mix in one egg at a time, mixing on low after each egg.
• Add your dry and wet ingredients to the batter in the following order, stirring after every step:  1/3 dry mix, 1/2 wet mix, 1/3 dry mix, the remaining wet mix, the remaining dry mix.
• Pour half of your batter into your buttered and floured bundt pan.  Add all your streusel in an even layer.  Then top with rest of your batter.

• Bake at 350 degrees until a wooden skewer comes out cleanly, about an hour – I start checking at around 50 minutes for doneness.

• Cool the cake for 10 minutes on a rack and then, if you used a bundt pan, invert it on a plate to carefully remove the cake.  You can slide a knife around the sides of the pan to loosen the cake a bit.
• Cool the cake completely.
• To make the glaze, mix sifted powdered sugar and coffee until smooth, then drizzle over cake.

• You may need to add more coffee to get the glaze to pour correctly.

• Let glaze harden for a few minutes then serve immediately.

WARNING: This delicious Coffee Coffee Cake is amazing, but it’s also super caffeinated.

Max and the Coffee Coffee Cake: A Cautionary Tale

I sent Lucy photos of the finished cake and she came over with Max (20 months) immediately to have a taste.

Max, of course, was curious and she gave him 3 little bites. THREE. LITTLE. BITES. (picture the Gilligan’s Island Theme playing… “a three hour tour…”) 

And then…

Max suddenly got super active and creative and happy and interactive. More than usual. In fact, I’d never seen him so engaged and BUSY.

And then the laughter began. And. Did. Not. Stop. We had ALL the fun. And then, sadly, we sent him home.

I have to tell you that Max is a naturally happy baby and also has a wonderful appetite. He will pretty much eat anything. But he’s also a great little sleeper. Bedtime is usually 7:30 pm until 6:30 am the next day.

So we were surprised to receive this text from Lucy around 10:00 pm.

It took them until 11:30 pm to get that kid to settle down. (Oops.) Glad it was Lucy and not me who gave him the cake. Just sayin.’

“Cooking With Coffee” indeed.

Oh, the Cubanity.

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