Are you looking for a delicious coffee cake recipe? Here is a cake recipe to create a balance of coffee and hazelnuts that will impress your family, friends and guests! It is easy to make this rich flavorful cake but it takes some time which is totally worth it.

Coffee Cake Ingredients

For the soaking syrup:
1-2 tbsp sugar (according to your taste)
1 tbsp instant coffee
100ml water

For the coffee cream:
200g sugar
250g butter
2 tbsp instant coffee
20g gelatin
50g powdered sugar
500ml fresh whole milk
500ml heavy cream
4 egg yolks

For the base of the cake:
150g of toasted hazelnut meal (stronger) or almond flour (milder)
6 eggs
10g instant coffee
250g butter
220g sugar
75g corn/potato starch
75g all-purpose flour
16g baking powder

Coffee Cake Preparation

Making Soaking Syrup:
Pour water (100ml) into saucepan and bring to a boil. Dissolve 1 tbsp of instant coffee and 1-2 tbsp sugar according to your taste. Let the liquid cool.

Making Coffee Cream:
Soften gelatin leaves by soaking in cold water. Combine milk and egg yolks in saucepan and beat them well. Heat saucepan till its lightly boil and add sugar and instant coffee to dissolve. Melt soften dried-gelatin and diced butter. Simmer couple of minutes before turning heat off.

Transfer the cooled liquid coffee cream into a large shallow container. Cover with cling-form and make direct-contact with liquid to prevent hard thin layer formed on surface. Chill in fridge for 2-3 hours. Coffee cream can be made the day before to avoid waiting few hours.

The coffee cream will be hard and gelatinous after cooling in fridge. Soften the cream using food processor with blades. Whip 2 cups (500ml) heavy cream with sieve powdered sugar onto the coffee cream. Gently blend the mixture. Cover mixture with cling film and store in fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Making coffee base:
Preheat oven to 350 Fahrenheit (180 Celsius). Dissolve 1 tbsp of instant coffee into few tbsp of hot water and let it cool. Dice butter and allow it to soften. All ingredients must be in room temperature to produce a smooth no-lump coffee base mixture!

Add sugar (100g) and soften butter into a stand-mixer bowl. Turn on stand-mixer to beat content for 10 minutes to get the fluffy frothy mixture. Separate egg yolks from egg whites. Add egg yolks one at a time with thin stream of coffee while beating constantly.

Beat egg whites for 30 seconds to 1 minute to get frothy mixture before adding remaining sugar in small stream to allow the beaten eggs become soft-peak. To check whether the batter its soft-peak, lift the electric beater and see the sticky gluey batter form a peak. Stiff-peak makes it lumpy.

Add toasted hazelnuts meal or almond flour into mixture. Sieve cornstarch, all-purpose flour and baking powder into the mixture. Add beaten egg whites into mixture as well in couple of spoonfuls, stirring gently from top to bottom. This prevents it from deflating. Pour all the mixture into a 9-inch cake pan or springform pan which is already buttered. Bake for 45 minutes.

Use a toothpick and pierce the cake’s base and if the toothpick comes out dry and clean, the cake is ready to be taken out of oven for cooling. Otherwise, bake cake for another 5-10 minutes.

Assembling Cake:
After cooling, cut cake base in half and soak first-half with soaking syrup. Place a scoop of coffee cream on the first-half and spread it evenly with spatula. Sandwich the other half cake-base and use remaining soaking syrup on it.

Cover whole cake with coffee cream including the sides using the cake spatula. Sieve coffee cream if there is lumps in it. Decorate the cake’s bottom edge with chopped hazelnuts and garnish the top with remaining coffee cream. Add chocolate coffee beans as the finishing touch.

Coffee Cake Tips

You can store the cake for a few days in fridge. Keep it covered to prevent cake from absorbing the fridge smell.