Coffee, Walnut and Ricotta Cake

Last weekend I had lunch with some young friends visiting from America. One asked me what I thought our greatest misconception about them was. It took some thought as someone who’s travelled to the states frequently and who has many American friends. I did, however, point to a significant difference between the two populations…coffee!!

We’re a patchwork of the many streams of immigration our country has enjoyed in it’s short history. The cultures who’ve called our shores home have brought with them many of the comforts of home to stave the homesickness. Thankfully the most significant influences of these facets of home has been food.

Food and all the senses it feeds really does offer us feelings of home, culture and ritual. Australian cuisine is influenced with many of these inspirations from those who’ve joined us. Without a real cuisine of our own we’ve embraced all the new flavours brought here blending them with our own produce, much of which is unique to our land and have created a mosaic cuisine of our own.

You can almost trace our migration patterns through our short history by the food influences in various localities. Victoria, where I live, has become home to many cultures across the annuls of time and consequently developed its own regionality creating a lifestyle akin to living in a four dimensional atlas. The perfect home for a food lover…and a coffee lover.

In the fifties Melbourne became home to a huge post war influx of European migration. With this wave of new citizens came all the wonderful food you can imagine. Much of which was modified to accommodate missing ingredients unavailable here hence the blending of cuisine and produce. Where modifications couldn’t be made folks would grow their own produce, small backyard urban farms springing up throughout the suburbs. Indeed, the surplus creating a conduit for migrants to share and create friendships with neighbours. Alongside this coffee created a bridge to these bonds.

We’d previously been a largely tea drinking society born of British settlement and only having instant coffee available to us but the introduction of traditionally social Europeans and their spectacular brew coffee culture here was born. The rich full flavour of coffee pervaded many our days, percolators, a take on traditional stove top coffee from far away shores, became fashionable and coffee the hot drink served in polite settings. Today with this history in the background we’re known worldwide for the quality of our coffee, our love of the brew and passion for our regular intake.

America, like us, also enjoyed waves of migration influencing their culture and cuisine. Like us some of theirs came from Europe too but perhaps some of the biggest influences came from south of the border bringing influences from central and Latin America and with it their coffee styles. This became glaringly obvious in conversation with my young friends, both from Texas. One who’s been in Australia for a while pulled out her phone to show her pal, who’s on a brief visit, a photo from an electrical goods store in Queensland. The photo showed rows of espresso machines and one filter machine. The girls shocked told me it would be the reverse ‘at home’ where the central American influences have informed a culture of filter coffee makers. Us with our Euro influences on the other hand love espresso machine brews, even at home.

As I tried to explain our obsession I recalled my own love of coffee. Flashes of memory came back to me recalling my parents drinking instant coffee, huge in the 70’s and 80’s and of course my first taste of anything that tasted of coffee. I was a small child with Mum at her mid-week ladies suburban tennis competition. A weekly event, I was always more enamoured with the lavish afternoon teas the ladies would produce than the game itself. The table would heave with fluffy pikelets, delicate ribbon sandwiches and light as air sponge cakes sandwiched with clouds of cream crowned with passionfruit icing delectably dripping down the sides…and coffee cake. I was always intrigued by what others were eating and often asked my parents if I could try what they were having. A decidedly adult flavour my mother doubted my desire when I asked for coffee cake but happily cut me a sliver. I loved it instantly like a gate way drug and gobbled up that delicious bake to the amusement and delight of all the ladies at the table.

In later years I went on to be a passionate consumer of the brew even defending my consumption to my cardiologist, him surrendering in frustration. And I never forgot that coffee cake. Like many retro flavours, I’ve noticed it making somewhat of a comeback. Let’s face it, is there ever too many ways to enjoy coffee?

This is my take on a hearty coffee cake. Not feather light like 1970’s sponge but rather sturdy and moist with the extra Italian influence of ricotta and lots of lovely coffee and caramel flavours.

Ingredients:

220 gm butter softened

90 gm caster sugar

60 gm brown sugar

3 eggs beaten

150gm ricotta broken up and mashed with a fork

1 ½ tsp vanilla paste

¼ c strong espresso

1 Tb coffee liqueur

1 Tb treacle

225 gm self-raising flour

100 gm walnuts ground

¼ tsp bicarb soda

¼ salt flakes

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 c and prepare a 20 cm spring form cake pan greasing and lining with baking paper.

Combine dry ingredients set aside.

In a stand mixer combine butter, sugars and vanilla. Using the paddle attachment beginning on low speed begin mixing until combined then increase medium to medium high to cream the two together. Cream until very pale and fluffy, scraping down a couple of times as you go. Maybe go and find a job to do while you wait, a few moments distraction  gives your mixer the extra time with the butter we often don’t give it…or maybe that’s me. You want the sugar to be starting to dissolve and a finer grain if rubbed between your fingers.

Reduce speed and add eggs in two to three batches mixing on high between each addition. It may look a little curdled after this, don’t panic. Add the ricotta and coffee shot and mix until combine. It will now look very curdled. Stop the mixer, sprinkle over your dry ingredients and mix on low speed for a minute or two to combine. Remove the bowl from the mixer and finish gently by hand with a spatula giving it only a few turns.

Dollop the mixture into the prepared pan gently smoothing over the top. It’s quite a stiff batter so try and spread as you drop spoonful’s into the pan so as not to handle it too much.

Pop in the oven baking 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in tin for ten minutes before removing from tin and cooling completely on a wire rack.

Icing:

1 c icing sugar

1 Tb instant coffee granules

1 ½ Tb boiling water

25 gm soft butter

2 tsp sour cream

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix until completely combined and butter and cream are amalgamated with no little lumps appearing. I like to add the coffee granule whole (not dissolved) for extra pop of coffee flavour and I like to see them in the icing. If you prefer you can stir the coffee through water before adding it to the other ingredients for a more even look and mouth feel.

Spread evenly over cake and allow to set before serving….or not…it’s hard to wait. And don’t forget lashings of cream.