The French love them some coffee. Though not necessarily in a delicious mug, steaming and tasting of exotic locales, because actually the little strong cups you get in the cafés aren’t the most delicious, cute as they may look.
But that’s not the point. Coffee-they love the flavoring in éclairs, cakes, cookies…everything. So in honor of such a traditional flavor, we pulled out the coffee essence, instant coffee grains and just plain old coffee to flavor every layer of our Moka cake.
Starts out with a coffee flavored cake…
…cut into 3 layers and soaked with a simple syrup, coffee flavored of course…
….and layered with buttercream – surprisingly, coffee flavored…
… and then completely covered, twice, in the same buttercream.
This is where things get fancy. A small ring of chocolate nibs line the bottom of the cake and 6 rings are outlined on the top of the cake.
With a cornet, you pipe a cross-hatch in each little ring. Not only do you have to have stable hands to make straight lines, you have to have even spacing to make the cross-hatch look right. Not two of my known specialties, so it took me a…few, yeah, we’ll go with few…tries. Yoga deep breathing was key. Here’s my final attempt, along with the flames piped along the rings. And please ignore the bad starfish looking thing in the middle and the shadows. Yoga only goes so far.
On the upside, I took a lovely trip to a pastry supply shop following this and am the proud new owner of piping tips.
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