Coffee, maple and pecan cake

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend especially all the mothers out there celebrating Mother's Day.  I spent most of mine baking for an afternoon tea today.  I baked everything from scratch except for the bread. There will be multiple posts to showcase everything we had today. I'm going to start with the layer cake which is a little different from the traditional victoria sponge cake. It's a twist on a coffee and walnut cake using pecans and maple syrup. The recipe is from Ocado which I modified slightly. 

The cake was moist and the coffee and pecan flavours really came through. I am now totally in love with Camp coffee essence.  The icing was on the sweet side but it went well with the cake. A definite winner! Leftovers were given to Yogi and his team - do let me know what you guys think! I wish I'd kept another slice for myself now :)

 pecans, coffee essence and maple syrup

 melt butter and maple syrup for the icing

 base layer

 cross section

Recipe from ocado 

I've added my changes below

For the cake

225g self raising flour

175g caster sugar

175g butter

3 eggs

2 tablespoon coffee essence

100g pecans, roughly chopped

For the icing

100g butter

4 tablespoon coffee essence

2 tablespoon maple syrup

350g icing sugar

Whole pecan nuts to decorate 

• Preheat the oven to 180C.
• Grease and line 2 sandwich tins.
• Beat all ingredients for cake except pecans in a mixer until smooth. 
• Stir in the pecans.
• Divide evenly into 2 tins and bake for approximately 30-35 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
• Allow to cool in the tins for 5 minutes before turning out to a wire rack to cool completely. 
• To make the icing, melt the butter and maple syrup in a pan over medium heat.
• Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl. 
• Pour the butter and syrup mixture into the icing sugar.
• Add coffee essence. 
• Beat until smooth. 
• Sandwich the cakes together with icing. Spread more icing on the top and sides.
• Decorate with whole pecans as shown or you can sprinkle crushed pecans on top. 

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