My mom very kindly bought me a little book called 150 Perfect Cakes and Bakes from John Lewis last year and it has the most amazing coffee cake recipe in it:
Old Fashioned Coffee Cake
Prep time 30 minutes
Cooking time 20 minutes
175g (6 oz) soft margarine (I use stork on the supermarket own version)
175g (6 oz) light muscovado sugar or caster sugar
175g (6 oz) self raising flour
1 teaspoon Baking powder
3 eggs
3 teaspoons instant coffee dissolved in two teaspoons boiling water
For the frosting I changed the recipe to use Philadelphia as it gives a better consistency
1 8oz tub of full fat cream cheese
1/4 cup butter or margarine softened
4 cups (16 oz) icing sugar sifted
3 teaspoons instant coffee dissolved in boiling water
50g dark chocolate melted to drizzle on the top afterwards
Throw all the cake ingredients into a large bowl and beat either by hand or with an electric mixer until you get a smooth mixture
Divide the mixture evenly between 2 x 18cm (7 inch) sandwich tins, greased and base lined with grease proof paper and spread the surfaces level. Bake in a pre-heated oven 180C (350F) gas mark 4 for 20 mins until well risen and the cakes spring back when pressed.
Leave for a few minutes loosen and then turn the cakes out onto a wire rack to cool off, whilst they cool off you can make the topping.Put the philadelphia, butter, coffee and half the icing sugar in a bowl and start to mix and gradually mix in the rest of the icing sugar until it is smooth. Spread half the cake with some of the frosting and then cover with the other half and use the rest of the frosting to cover the cake.
Melt the chocolate and drizzle across the cake or you can do as I did and use a mold to make some chocolate hearts. ( I have a chocolate melting kit which I bought in the works which came with moulds).
Finally make a cuppa grab a slice and enjoy!!
