Vegan coffee cream cake

Layered and dusted liberally with cocoa powder

I made up this recipe last night, as I was in the mood for tiramisu but I didn’t have ladyfingers. Instead, this recipe is a sticky coffee and syrup sponge cake layer topped with lush coffee and amaretto flavoured cream and dusted with cocoa powder.

The most interesting element for me in making this recipe was my first experience of making coffee-flavoured tofu, an experiment which worked brilliantly!

Despite being one layer, the cake looked fairly big, however we are about to polish it off just 24 hours after making it. You can get 8 reasonable slices or 6 generous ones out of it. For an even more impressive cake you could add additional layers of cake and cream filling.

You will need:

For the cake:

• 100 g plain flour
• 100 g demerera sugar
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 Tbsp coffee and chicory essence
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 70 ml water
• 1 Tbsp golden syrup
• 1/2 tsp cider vinegar

For the coffee and amaretto cream topping:

• 1 handful of cashew nuts
• 75 ml water
• 20 ml amaretto
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp demerera sugar
• 1 Tbsp golden syrup
• 1 batch of home made tofu, made with the addition of 1 cup of very strong coffee

Plus cocoa powder for dusting and fresh fruit or nuts of your choice to garnish.

Directions:

1. Pre-heat your oven to 180°C.

2. Brew 1 cup of very strong coffee. We used decaffeinated cafetierre coffee.

3. Prepare a batch of home made tofu, but before adding any vinegar (or lemon juice) stir in your coffee, which should be sufficiently brewed by the time your soya milk is heated through. Note that the acidity of the coffee means that much less vinegar/lemon juice is required to make the milk curdle. The finished tofu is pale brown and tastes mildly of coffee! This takes some time to drain, so set aside while you move on to your cake base.

4.Mix together the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a bowl.

5. Make a well in your flour, and add the water, vanilla, coffee and chicory essense, and vegetable oil. Mix well, then add the golden syrup and cider vinegar, stirring thoroughly until well combined. The consistency will be like a thick batter

6. Pour into a greased circular cake tin (I used a silicone one) and bake for approximately half an hour (or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean), in an oven pre-heated to 180°C.

7. When the cake is baked, leave to cool while you prepare the topping.

8. In a blender or food processor, combine all of the cream topping ingredients, including your coffee tofu from earlier. You are aiming for a very smooth but thick consistency. If it’s too thick add a little water, just 1 tsp at a time, until it becomes moist enough to combine well.

9. Spread the cake with your cream topping, dust liberally with cocoa powder, garnish with fresh fruit or nuts as desired, and chill well before serving.

We garnished this slice with a raspberry!