Strong brew of coffee?

Merlin5

Merlin5

Merlin5

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I'm making an espresso coffee cake where the recipe requires 240ml of hot strongly brewed coffee and I'm not sure how many teaspoons of my regular freeze dried instant coffee is regarded as strong? Recipe also has me adding 20g of espresso powder to the brew.
 
Is an espresso cake a espresso cake without espresso?

I'd just make what you normally drink but in 240ml, but surely freeze dried coffee in a cake is going to be pretty gross?
 
Begbie said:
Is an espresso cake a espresso cake without espresso?

I'd just make what you normally drink but in 240ml, but surely freeze dried coffee in a cake is going to be pretty gross?
Click to expand...

240ml water fills my drinking mugs and I normally have 1 teaspoon of instant coffee. Maybe 2 teaspoons would be classed as strong?

All I know is she says make a brew of strong coffee and then add espresso powder. I don't have a cafetiere or any coffee gadgets so I assume it's ok to use instant coffee. Last week I tried a coffee cake recipe with just instant coffee and could not really taste coffee flavour in the sponge. I've been told that I need to use espresso. Nevertheless, this recipe I'm using has coffee + espresso.

https://leitesculinaria.com/61230/recipes-espresso-cake.html
 
I'm sure all the coffee-heads here will compare making an espresso cake without the espresso, a bit like making a lemon cake without the lemon :p (And quite right too).

If you normally brew about that amount with one teaspoon of your instant I'd do 4-5 spoonfuls at least.
 
Scam said:
I'm sure all the coffee-heads here will compare making an espresso cake without the espresso, a bit like making a lemon cake without the lemon :p (And quite right too).

If you normally brew about that amount with one teaspoon of your instant I'd do 4-5 spoonfuls at least.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, but I don't think that's really addressing the question. 4 to 5 or more might completely overpower a cake for all I know. All I need to know is what would be regarded as a strong brew of coffee suitable for a well flavoured coffee cake, not to drink.
If anyone here was making a coffee cake and the recipe said to make a strong 240ml brew and then followed by espresso powder, how many teaspoons of instant coffee would they estimate to add?

Hmm, maybe I should consider 2 heaped teaspoons as strong.
 
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Well.. espresso is very strong. To the point that a lot of people if they're not used to it wouldn't be able to drink it. But they're saying a strong brew of coffee in 240ml -- so whether or not they mean 240ml of espresso-strength coffee or 240ml of a 'strong' coffee is anybody's guess. A shot of espresso would be 17-22g of ground coffee beans. I reckon if you do something like 50-65g of instant coffee you might be in the right ballpark. But I'm really just guessing. The recipe should just give you a weight really...
 
Well, the recipe says 240ml strong brew of coffee which I assume might be just regular instant, and THEN to add 20g espresso powder to that brew. Yes espresso will probably be potent enough to flavour the cake so I think I'll just make a 2 teaspoon instant coffee brew and then add the espresso. To be honest, I've seen another recipe which simply uses espresso powder mixed with a bit of water and then added to the batter.

Might seem like a trivial detail but with all the ingredients and time taken to make a cake like this, I don't want to ruin it by making it too strong or even too weak. I already threw away two previous coffee cakes and wasted a lot of time snd ingredients! But I won't be beaten (no pun intended) :p

This was my first cake. Icing tasted very nicely of coffee but not the sponge.

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Looks great. Honestly I would just get 240ml of hot water and chuck 3 times as much instant in. Maybe more. It probably needs to be *just* over the point where it's not nice to drink.
 
.... people used to use camp coffee , which google reminds me has chicory, so does that/chicory have much more of the traditional coffee flavour used in cakes;
real espresso shots, don't, for me, preserve much of the strong taste, when cold.
 
To give you some idea of coffee grounds use. I dose 20g of coffee to produce 40g of espresso.
The same 20g of coffee with a filter grind i'd use with 333g of water to produce about 300g of brewed coffee.

Now, that doesn't define the 'strength' that's more on the total dissolved solids (TDS) and also the roast profile of the coffee itself. Darker roasted coffee people generally assume is stronger, but all it really is, is a more bitter flavour profile. It also contains less caffeine...

Using normal freeze dried coffee... I'd probably go with 3 or 4 spoonfuls to 240g of water for a cake.
 
Right, I've done 3 teaspoons of instant coffee with 240ml hot water. I've also measured out 20g of espresso powder. I dunno, seems like an awful lot of espresso. That's nearly 5 tablespoons. Two other recipes I've read are both only using 2 tablespoons of ground or espresso powder. Looks to me like this would make an unbearably strong coffee cake. What do you think? I mean the recipe says 20g espresso and apparently it's a very good recipe .:confused:


Edit: there's a button on the recipe that switches between metric and US volume measurements. When I switch to US it says 3 tablespoons of espresso. I've measured that and it comes to 13g. Seems better, I'll go with that and keep my fingers crossed.

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Well I put it all together and the coffee smell in the batter is lovely. I'll be surprised if it doesn't taste of coffee. Been in the oven for nearly an hour. Let's see how it does! I bought a bundt tin yesterday's so I'm looking forward to unmoulding it and see how it looks. :)

Folding soft peaks egg whites.

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Just before going into oven.

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