Coffee and Doughnuts Cake
Concept, cake and chocolate glaze recipe from Sprinkle Bakes. Swiss Meringue Buttercream adapted from Serious Eats.
A few notes: The cake is truly magnificent. Make it in two layers or three layers or one 9×13 layer, with Swiss Meringue buttercream or good old American buttercream or canned whipped cream – Whatever you want. It won’t disappoint. But, important tip: Don’t skip the baking soda!
Swiss Meringue buttercream still mystifies me – I’m not sure exactly what I did to make it turn out. I suspect it was the act of mixing longer than I thought I needed to, but it could have been the two extra tablespoons of cold butter I added on Saturday morning. There are great tutorials around from people who are much more qualified to help you troubleshoot your own Swiss Meringue. (I found the ones at Bakers Royale and Sweetapolita especially helpful.) After all my bumbling, the finished product was really delicious – satiny smooth with the perfect not-too-sweet coffee flavor. Like I said, I didn’t have quite enough frosting for a three layer cake – In the recipe below, I’ve upped the ingredient amounts from what I made by about 25%.
INGREDIENTS
Cake Layers
- Butter or shortening for greasing pans
- 3 ounces fine-quality semisweet chocolate…or whatever chocolate scraps you can extract from your kitchen.
- 1 1/2 cups hot brewed coffee
- 3 cups sugar
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
- 3 large eggs
- 3/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 1/2 cups well-shaken buttermilk
- 3/4 teaspoon vanilla
Coffee Buttercream
- 1 cup egg whites from about 8 large eggs
- 2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 tablespoons espresso powder, dissolved in 1 tablespoon warm water
- 2 cups (4 sticks) unsalted butter, cubed and softened at room temperature
- pinch of salt
Donuts with chocolate glaze
- About 50 glazed doughnut holes (I used an assortment of yeasted and yellow, chocolate and blueberry cake)
- 2/3 cup heavy cream
- 6 oz. bittersweet chocolate finely chopped
- 1 tbsp. light corn syrup
- Sprinkles of your choice
INSTRUCTIONS
Cake Layers
- Preheat oven to 300°F. use bottoms of pans to trace circles onto parchment paper. Cut out circles. Butter 3-9″ or 2-10″ pans, and put the parchment circles in bottoms. Butter the paper.
- Chop the chocolate if it’s in bar form. Put it in a medium bowl and pour the hot coffee over-top. Mix until the chocolate is melted. If you can’t get all the lumps out at first, let it sit for a few minutes then come back to it and mix until smooth.
- In a large bowl (not kidding about the size – Its got to hold a lot of dry ingredients) combine sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. (If your cocoa powder is compacted from sitting in the back of your pantry as long as mine has, shake it through a sieve to get the lumps out.) Whisk dry mixture until well mixed.
- In another large bowl, mix eggs with an electric mixer until they’re a little thicker, and pale yellow. (About 5 minutes with a spinster-model hand mixer.) Add the rest of the wet ingredients (oil through vanilla, plus the coffee/chocolate mixture) and beat until homogeneous. Add the dry mix to the wet mix and beat until just combined.
- divide batter between prepared pans and bake (rotating the pans if they won’t all fit on the middle rack) until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, or with a few crumbs attached, and when cake springs back when lightly pressed. About 50-60 minutes.
- Cool layers on racks, still in their pans. When completely cool, unstick the cakes from the sides of the pans by running a small knife around the edges, then turn them over onto cooling racks. Another important pro tip: Remember to take off the parchment paper! Cake can be made a day or two ahead. Keep the layers wrapped in plastic wrap at room temp.
Coffee Buttercream
- In the bowl of a double boiler, whisk the egg whites and the sugar together. Bring a small amount of water to boil in the bottom of the double boiler, and place the bowl on top. If you don’t have a double boiler, you can put the egg whites and sugar in a medium heatproof bowl, then place that on top of a saucepan with a little simmering water in the bottom. Either way, Make sure the bowl doesn’t touch the water, or the egg whites will scramble.
- Whisk constantly until the sugar is melted (it no longer feels grainy when you rub it between your fingers) and the mixture is 160 degrees F. (Check it with a candy or instant read-thermometer.)
- If using a double boiler, transfer the mixture to a large bowl. If you’re using a bowl and pan, just take the bowl off the heat. Start whipping on high speed with an electric mixer. Whip, whip, whip and whip. Keep whipping until you’ve had time to reconsider every decision you’ve made that led you to this moment. Or, until stiff peaks form and the mixture is no longer warm – about 10-14 minutes.
- Beat in vanilla and espresso powder mixed with water. Add butter one cube at a time. incorporate each cube fully before adding the next. Sprinkle with salt and then – you guessed it – keep mixing. The mixture may start to look “curdled,” which is fine. It will come together as you keep mixing. In any case, keep mixing even after everything looks combined. Eventually, it will darken in color and tighten into a thick, shiny, spreadable texture.
- Now you can: Use the frosting right away; store it in the freezer in an airtight container or Ziploc bag for up to 2 months; or store it in the fridge for up to two weeks. Let it come to room temperature before you use it, and re-whip with an electric mixer it to make it smooth and spreadable.
Chocolate Ganache for Donuts
- Warm the cream in a small saucepan over low heat on the stove until hot but not boiling. Alternately, you can heat it up in a glass dish or measuring cup in the microwave for a couple minutes. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and corn syrup in a medium bowl. Stir until smooth and shiny.
- Dip each bare doughnut-hole backside in ganache. carefully place on rack or baking sheet. Sprinkle with sprinkles immediately, then let glaze set. The doughnut holes should be dry in about an hour, but I waited overnight to be safe.
- When they’re dry enough to lightly touch without getting too much chocolate on your fingers, carefully slice them in half so that each doughnut hole is separated into a glazed half and a ganached half. A sharp, heavy, non-serrated knife made the cleanest cut for me. Leave a few holes whole for the top of the cake
Assembly
- Frost and stack cake layers. Press flat sides of doughnut hole halves onto side of cake, alternating between glazed and ganached. Place four or five whole doughnut holes on top of the cake, surrounded by any extra doughnut hole halves if you want.
- Store in the refrigerator, but bring to room temperature before serving.
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Sprinkle Fix 
Yes, yes, yes! I’m gonna like this blog, Caitlin! Thanks for making me laugh!
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(For Caitlin’s reading public): I’m the husband in the piece! Very nicely drawn, Caitlin. You got the hair right, but you missed all the hardearned muscles. Thank you for sharing your harrowing take with us and for sharing the cake! You should be very proud of both!
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That is my girl, I can picture it all.
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