Coffee and Cardamom Cake

After two days without overhead lights due to tripping them and being rather perplexed by the old fashioned fuse box (note to landlords: please stop lumping students with crappy goods), I finally figured out how to get everything back on, and lo, let there be light!  To celebrate being able to cook by more than candle light, I made myself a cake.  It had been a cake nestled in my mind after reading about the Arabic way of serving coffee- with orange water and cardamom- and about the cake one can make inspired by this, a recipe I’ve now lost.  The below is basically a rejigged sponge cake.  I’ve tried so many sponge cake recipes and the one below has been the best.  Fills one sandwich tin.

Ingredients

2 eggs cracked, weighed, and whisked.

Then use the following in the same weight as the eggs –

Self-raising flour, sifted (I had none, so used plain, apparently it’s a teaspoon of baking powder per 110g of plain flour to convert it)

Softened butter or margarine

Sugar

Then –

1 and a half tsp baking powder

2 tbsp strong coffee

4 cardamom pod contents ground up good

For the icing –

Full fat cream cheese

More coffee

Caster Sugar

1. Preheat to around 160 degrees (non-fan).
2. Cream the butter and sugar
3. Add a little whisked egg with a tablespoon of flour, and mix.  Repeat until the egg is gone.
4. Fold in the rest of the flour, along with the coffee and cardamom.
5. If it splits, just give it a quick beat (oi oi!).
6. Put in the oven for half an hour or until a knife poked in the middle comes out clean.
7. Remove when done and allow to cool (definitely allow to cool or the icing won’t work).
8. For the icing, mix all the icing bits together.  The amounts depend upon how luxurious you want it, but I generally use a whole pack of cheese and add the sugar to taste.  You can add a bit of orange water in here, or a little orange juice, but I had neither so didn’t.  I expect it’d be lovely!