Rum and coffee walnut cake - small sized

While most people bake bread on the 20th of August in Hungary (festival of the new bread amongst other things) that's when I usually get the walnuts out of the freezer. The reason behind is that I have a granny who celebrates her birthday today and she likes walnuts. It's a small cake, although everything depends on how big of a sponge cake you manage to bake.

Measurements are for a 18cms wide cake ring. Sponge cake is made of 5 eggs, which will rise quite high in this small ring but I think 5 eggs should be enough in case you want to make a bigger cake as well. You should have a bit more of walnuts than necessary for the filling so that you can decorate your cake with it at the end. 

Ingredients for the sponge cake: 

• 5 cold eggs, yolks and whites separated
• 100 grs of caster sugar 
• 130 grs of plain flour
• 1 coffespoon of vanilla extract or flavour

Separate the cold eggs to two different dishes. Start whisking the whites, gradually adding the caster sugar, this will make your whites be very stiff when done. You'll know they are beaten properly when you take the beater out and you can see stiff peaks. Then mix the yolks with the vanilla extract and pour the mixture over the whites. 

You will have to use a spoon to mix it, never a hand whisk. Sift the flour into the mixture, again gradually, and keep stirring carefully until you get a consistent mixture. Bake it for about 20-25 minutes at 170 deg Celsius, with the fans on. Make sure you bake it properly, you don't want an unbaked centre. 

The filling will consist of two parts, one is a traditional walnut filling that you would use for Christmas cakes, the other half is vanilla custard. 

Ingredients: 

• 200 grs of walnuts
• 100 mls of milk
• 100 grs of caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon of rum flavour
• zest of half a lemon
• a couple of drops of lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon of instant coffee
• 400 mls of milk for the custard
• 1 pack of custard powder, vanilla flavoured
• sweetener or sugar for the custard, according to your taste 

We will start by roasting the walnuts in a dry pan just until they start to smell really good, we don't want to burn them. When that's done, move them to a plate so they cool down more quickly. 

When they are cold, you will need to grind them. In the meantime pour the 100 mls of milk into a smaller pot and place it on low heat. Dissolve the coffee and the sugar in the milk and bring it to a boil. That's when you can add the walnuts, but you will have to give it a good stir too. Add the lemon zest and the tiny bit of juice as well. Cooking time is about 10 minutes but keep stirring otherwise it will stick to the bottom of the pot. After the 10 minutes have passed, let the mixture cool down. 

All you need to do now is to prepare the custard and let that cool down as well. The final step is mixing the two parts together in a mixing bowl. Don't forget to taste! :)

Frosting for the top of the cake:

You need one tablespoon of instant coffee and just a tiny bit of hot water, so that the coffee dissolves. Then add some caster sugar, keep stirring it and keep adding the sugar until you get a frosting which can be easily spread on top of the cake. 

Cut the sponge cake into 4 layers, and fill it with the walnut cream. You will have enough left to cover the cake from the outside as well. Then you can sprinkle the extra ground walnut on the side and the top of the cake. If you guys know a better way to spread the frosting on top of the cake then don't do what I did because the ground walnut on the top kept sticking into it. I somehow managed to spread it all over the top but it doesn't look so nice. You can also place full walnuts on top of the cake which you previously dipped in the frosting and the ground walnut.