Vanilla Coffee Cake with Creamy Coffee Buttercream Frosting

Last Sunday our pastor's wife asked me if maybe I could bake some coffee-flavored cupcakes for her for a wedding shower.  I told her I'd never made coffee-flavored cake or cupcakes before, but I'd certainly give it a try!

Since I didn't want to wait until the actual wedding shower to play with a recipe, and today was my MawMaw's 81st birthday, it seemed like a good enough reason to bake a cake! 

My friend Tara gave sent me a link to what appears to be an awesome recipe (a cupcake you must see and I will be trying Tara!), but I didn't have everything on hand to make that, so I decided to "wing it" and come up with my own recipe.

What I ended up doing was altering my usual white cake recipe for the cake by simply adding some {very strong} instant coffee and some extra vanilla.  For the frosting, I combined my cream cheese buttercream recipe plus some brown sugar (inspired by this Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes recipe) and of course some coffee...and a little chocolate at the end.

Vanilla Coffee Cake (or Cupcakes)

Yield: 24 Cupcakes or a 9" cake (2 layers)

Ingredients:

• 1 White Cake Mix
• 3 eggs
• 1/3 cup of oil
• 8 ounces of sour cream
• 1 box instant French Vanilla Pudding mix
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla
• 1 tablespoon of instant coffee (I used Nescafe samples)
• 1/2 cup water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325°. 
2. Mix water and instant coffee.  Heat in a microwave for 30 seconds and stir to dissolve.  Allow to cool (I stuck it in the freezer for a few minutes) before mixing in.
3. Mix all ingredients except the chocolate chips and including the cooled coffee.  Beat on medium until the batter is very smooth.
4. Stir in the chocolate chips, if desired.
5. Pour into prepared pans or cupcake pans with liners and bake for 20-30 minutes (test with toothpick).

Creamy Coffee Buttercream

For the frosting, as I mentioned above, I combined a couple of other recipes and then added some extras.  For the filling between the 2 layers of the cake, I added extra instant coffee grounds and stirred them right into the frosting for some "kick".

For the outer frosting, I actually didn't have any coffee flavoring - just a really creamy delicious buttercream.  For the swirly brown... well, instead of using food coloring, I just added cocoa and coffee.  I figured...coffee and chocolate go together, right?  So, here's the basic recipe with the options...

Ingredients:

• 1 stick butter, at room temperature
• 8 ounces of cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 pounds confectioners sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 3-4 tablespoons of milk
• 1 teaspoon instant coffee (optional)
• 1 teaspoon instant coffee disolved in 1 tablespoon of hot water (optional)
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder (optional)

Directions:

1. Cream the butter, cream cheese and shortening together until smooth.
2. Add in the brown sugar.
3. Add the confectioners sugar 1 cup at a time until well combined (it will be a little dry)
4. Pour in the vanilla and add milk until desired texture is obtained.  
5. Add the liquid coffee, coffee grounds, and or/cocoa if desired.  The amount of liquid may have to be adjusted to account for the other flavors (ie., add more milk to off-set the dry cocoa, or use less milk if adding liquid coffee).  

I really wish I had gotten a picture of this cake once cut, but we cut it at the nursing home for MawMaw's birthday and there were about 13 of us in my MawMaw's two person room.

So...there wasn't much room to breath, let alone pull out a camera and snap a bunch of pictures.  Besides, I took turns holding one of my three youngest children throughout the stay so I had a shortage of hands.

Just imagine that the inside was beautiful pale moist coffee-colored cake with about a half inch of delicious creamy icing between two layers.  I opted to not add the chocolate chips to her cake, but I did add some to the cupcakes and either way...delicious!!

Do any of you have recipes for coffee-flavored cake and/or icing?  I'd love to see them!  I still plan to make Tara's cupcakes, but for today, these worked beautifully!

PS - I'm still waiting to hear if our pastor's wife liked them.  I left her a few of them at the church tonight but didn't get a chance to talk to her afterwards and see what she thought!

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