Are you searching for the perfect coffee cake recipe, or perhaps looking to explore another delicious dessert like a moist and zesty cranberry cake?

Super Soft Coffee Cake with White Chocolate Coffee-Whipped Ganache Frosting

If you love coffee and you want a cake that literally tastes like a smooth creamy cup of coffee, then this super soft coffee cake that has the most smooth white chocolate and coffee-whipped ganache frosting is exactly what you need. We’re going to start off with the whipped chocolate ganache frosting because it needs some time to set.

What You’ll Need

For the Whipped Ganache Frosting

• 180 grams or one cup of white chocolate (broken into pieces or chunks)
• 675 grams or three cups of cream
• 1 1/2 tablespoons of instant coffee powder

For the Coffee Cake

• 320 grams or about two and a half cups of all purpose flour
• 40 grams or a third cup of corn flour (also known as cornstarch)
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 4 tablespoons of instant coffee powder (about 15 grams, using a very fine instant coffee)
• 113 grams or half a cup of room temperature unsalted butter
• 105 grams or half a cup of unflavored vegetable oil
• 300 grams or one and a half cups of soft brown sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 1/4 tablespoons of vanilla essence or extract
• 1 teaspoon of white vinegar
• 337 grams or one and a half cups of buttermilk (divided: 112 grams/half a cup for one step, 225 grams/one cup for another)

For the Candied Walnuts

• 30 grams or two tablespoons of soft brown sugar
• 14 grams or one tablespoon of unsalted butter
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 100 grams or one cup of coarsely chopped walnuts

How to Make It

1. Prepare the Whipped Ganache Frosting

1. Add your white chocolate to a heat-proof bowl. Make sure your white chocolate is either broken up into little pieces or cut into little chunks.
2. Add cream to a saucepan and heat it up on a low to medium heat until the cream begins to gently bubble.
3. Once it starts to gently bubble, take it off the heat immediately as you don’t want to overheat the cream, and then immediately pour it over the white chocolate.
4. At this stage, also add in one and a half tablespoons of instant coffee powder. There’s no need to mix it in; just let it kind of sit on the top.
5. Now, let this sit for about five minutes or so to allow the white chocolate to melt.
6. Once it’s ready, use an immersion blender to blend the cream, chocolate, and coffee together. Keep your immersion blender at the bottom of the bowl so that the mixture doesn’t kind of go everywhere and you aren’t incorporating too much air at this point. You can also do this last part in a regular blender or food processor, but just be careful not to over mix it.
7. Once that’s done, it should be nice and smooth. Pour it into a wider dish because it’ll cool faster.
8. Cover the top with some cling wrap so that it’s touching the top of the ganache. This will just prevent a skin from forming as it cools.
9. This needs to go into the fridge for at least a few hours because it needs to be really nice and cold before you whip it.

2. Prepare the Coffee Cake

1. Begin by preheating your oven to 160C or 320F with the fan on.
2. Grease or line two eight-inch cake tins and set them aside.
3. Sift dry ingredients: Sift together the all-purpose flour, corn flour (cornstarch), baking soda, baking powder, salt, and instant coffee powder.
4. Using a whisk, just mix that all together until well combined. Set your dry ingredients aside for now.
5. Cream wet ingredients: In a large bowl, add room temperature unsalted butter, unflavored vegetable oil, and soft brown sugar.
6. Using a hand or stand mixer on a medium-high speed, cream that together for about two minutes until it’s light and fluffy.
7. Add eggs: Add three large eggs one at a time with your mixer on a low to medium speed. Make sure that each egg is mixed in well before you add in the next, about 10 to 15 seconds in between each egg.
8. Add liquids: Once all your eggs are mixed in, next add in vanilla essence or extract, white vinegar, and 112 grams or half a cup of buttermilk. Mix that all together until it’s well combined. Your batter may look a little curdled, but that’s okay.
9. Combine wet and dry: Get all of that batter off of your attachments because you’ll be doing the rest of the mixing by hand.
10. First, add in half of your premixed dry ingredients from earlier and gently fold that in with a spatula until just combined. You don’t want to over mix it.
11. Then add in the remaining 225 grams or one cup of buttermilk and gently fold that in until just combined.
12. Finish off by folding in the remaining dry ingredients until just combined. Do not over mix the batter. Once all the flour has disappeared and the batter is nice and smooth, then stop there. Your batter should no longer be curdled.
13. Bake: Evenly distribute the batter into your two pre-prepared cake tins.
14. Level out the tops and give your cake tins a little bang to get rid of any large air bubbles.
15. These are going to go into the oven for 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
16. Cool: Once out of the oven, let the cakes cool in the cake tins for about 20 minutes. If you enjoy baking different types of desserts, you might also like to try our decadent homemade chocolate cheesecake recipe.
17. Run a thin knife around the edges to release the cakes from the cake tins and turn them out onto a wire rack to completely cool.

3. Prepare the Candied Walnuts

1. Place a saucepan over a medium heat.
2. Add soft brown sugar, unsalted butter, and ground cinnamon.
3. Give that a little stir and then just let the butter and sugar melt, stirring occasionally.
4. Once all the sugar is completely melted and it just starts to gently bubble, then add in coarsely chopped walnuts.
5. Stir it so that the walnuts are evenly coated. You don’t want your walnut pieces to be too small, so just make sure that they’re decent chunks.
6. Once they’re all coated, take the walnuts off the heat immediately and then spread them out onto a tray to completely cool and harden. This should only take about five minutes or so.

4. Finish the Ganache and Assemble the Cake

1. Take off the cling wrap from the ganache. It should be like a thick liquid consistency now.
2. To make it easier to whip, pour it into a large bowl. (The little clumps you might see are just fat from the cream and are not a problem).
3. To whip the ganache, you can either use a hand or stand mixer, or a hand whisk. This whips up super quickly, so you really need to be careful not to over whip it, otherwise it will split.
4. While whipping it, keep a really close eye on it and check it every so often. As soon as it stiffens up to kind of semi-stiff peaks, then stop there.
5. Assemble: Trim off the tops of your cake layers so that they’re nice and flat. (If your cake layers are already pretty flat, you’ll only trim off a very small amount).
6. Place your first cake layer onto your cake stand.
7. Spread out a generous amount of your whipped ganache on top with an offset spatula.
8. Evenly distribute half of your candied walnut mixture on the top.
9. Place your next cake layer on top of that.
10. Spread out a generous amount of cream and smooth it out with your offset spatula.
11. Cover the sides with more of your whipped ganache frosting and smooth it out with your cake scraper.
12. To get a nice sharp edge on the top, use your offset spatula to bring that top lip of frosting into the middle of the cake.
13. Decorate: With your remaining ganache, pop it into a piping bag with a 1A round tip on it.
14. Pipe some little raindrops around the top edges of the cake.
15. Finish off by evenly distributing the remaining candied walnuts on the top.

Recipe Notes

• You can use cake flour in replacement of the all-purpose flour and cornstarch in this recipe.
• The cake batter smells incredibly good; you can really smell that coffee coming through.
• The finished cake layers are incredibly soft and packed with coffee flavor.
• The white chocolate and coffee whipped ganache adds a great caramelized coffee flavor.
• The candied walnuts add a crunchy pop of flavor and texture. It just all goes so well together.

Serving

This coffee cake is honestly so incredibly good. That white chocolate and coffee whipped ganache frosting is to die for, and the candied walnuts just add such a great amount of texture to the cake. It’s just like a little crunchy pop of flavor.