This Coffee Flavored Cake is delicious and simple. If you are looking for an easy cake to make for a birthday party or celebration, this recipe is for you.
For most Colombians, no day begins without coffee (cafecito), while no meal ends without it, and it’s offered to guests any time of the day. We drink it black or with milk, the latter we call 'café con leche'. I can’t imagine starting a day without coffee! I love just about any food and drink with coffee flavor.
Considering how much I love coffee, I'm surprised that I’ve not posted a recipe for this cake until now. Finally, I've made my own version of mamita’s Torta de Café (coffee flavored cake) and it is absolutely delicious!
In Colombia, we often use coffee to make traditional desserts, cocktails, cakes and savory dishes.
This Torta de Café (Coffee Flavored Cake) was one of a variety of regular desserts that were served at my grandma’s house on Sunday afternoons and holidays. You could usually count on one of the following desserts: arroz con leche, plátanos calados, brevas caladas, torta negra, or this Torta de Café, among a few others.
I topped and filled this coffee flavored cake with a frosting made with cream, instant coffee and shaved chocolate, which worked out very well. If you adore coffee as much as I do, then you’re going to love this cake!
What you Need to Make this Coffee Flavored Cake
You will will find the printable recipe card with exact ingredients amounts and directions below.
Flour: You need all purpose flour to make this cake.
Baking powder: Be sure the baking powder is fresh to ensure the cake rises.
Milk: I recommend using whole milk for this recipe.
Butter: I recommend using unsalted butter and leave it at room temperature for a while.
Eggs: at room temperature
Vanilla extract: Use a good quality vanilla extract. You will need it for the cake and the frosting.
Sugar: Granulated Sugar.
Coffee: Use a good quality strong coffee for this recipe.
Frosting: Heavy cream, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, instant coffee, grated sweet chocolate.
Torta de Café Recipe (Coffee Flavored Cake)
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 ½ cups all purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- ½ cup of whole milk
- 8 oz 2 sticks of butter
- 3 eggs at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 ¼ cups sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup of VERY strong coffee
Frosting
- 2 cups very cold heavy cream
- 6 tablespoons powdered sugar
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
- 2 tablespoons Instant Coffee
- 1 cup grated or shave sweet chocolate divided
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350° F.
- Grease and lightly flour 2 (9-inch) round cake dishes.
- In a bowl whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder.
- In a small pot heat the milk and butter, remove from the heat and set aside.
- In a large bowl beat the eggs with an electric mixer on high speed for 2 minutes. Add the sugar and continue mixing for 5 minutes more. Reduce the speed to low. Add the flour mixture, butter mixture, coffee and vanilla extract and mix for 1 more minute.
- Pour the batter into two baking dishes and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in the middle comes out clean. Cool cakes in pans for 10 min. Invert cakes onto wire racks, gently remove pans. Cool the cakes completely.
- In a large bowl the heavy cream, powdered sugar, vanilla, instant coffee and 6 tablespoons of shaved chocolate. Beat until the cream holds soft peaks.
- Place one cake layer on a serving plate, spreading ½ of the frosting on top, place the other cake layer on top and spread the top with remaining frosting.
- Add the remaining shaved chocolate on top of the cake. Eat immediately or keep frosted cake refrigerated until ready to eat.
Nutrition
This coffee flavored cake is perfect for the coffee lover in your life. This is one of those feel-good desserts that makes you feel warm and cozy inside, proving that food doesn’t have to be fancy to be good. I hope you enjoy my grandmother’s Torta de Café!
Mikey
This was one amazing find, and a great dessert to boot in the end. Colombian food is always a favourite of mine when going out to eat, and I have not yet been disappointed or left starving. The desserts are one of the reasons, as is the coffee - that itself shares the top two spots with Ethiopia. I have maybe made one or two dishes from the country beforehand in the kitchen, and I always look to expand my catalogue and repertoire.
For coming around to make this dessert, it was for the weekly ministry work. I had time off from the usual farmhand work on the day, and I ensure to spend the day making a dessert when those stars align. Thus far, I have been keeping consistent with trying a new country per burl as well as a different flavour profile every time. I also realised I had not ventured too much towards South America, and Colombia was my first nominee. While not the initial idea, it ultimately makes too much sense to go with one of the top exports - and as far as I know, I have not met Shakira.
Among the methodology with finding the right recipe, it goes to at least the night beforehand. Combing through the rich back catalogue of this website, I went back and forth between ideas before landing on the final choice. And we had our nominee, ripe and ready for the spotlight.
There were a few tweaks, and slight mishaps, with making the dessert. The same springboard pan that I used to store this dessert - or the first serving, I have a second one ripe and ready for church as I type this - was barely enough to contain it, after often being ample for previous outings. That adds to the next one, where it was more of a topping than a sandwich of cakes. With the time crunch and timezone differences, I impatiently put the frosting on almost as the cake was out of the oven. It was one of these stories for another occasion, where the end result was the saving grace of a fridge at the church hall. There was also getting it home, and God provides.
And, as I said at the beginning, despite what happened near the beginning, the end result was a fantastic cake. If it were for just the cake part of the dessert, it would have been nice enough. There was that definite coffee flavour from two longs blacks, and sponge cake's light and fluffy texture. But what really made it was the cream frosting, and the combination of coffee and chocolate did wonders. There were not too many people at the ministry meeting, yet a decent portion went. That night for dessert, my parents dolled out some servings complete with raspberries and ice cream.
After a few go-arounds with making dessert, this was fairly easy. I am at a stage where I can level up my skills in the kitchen, particularly in making desserts. This is one that I can envision making again, maybe not for the little ones though.
Estaba muy delicioso. Muy impresionado.
anonymous
Good recipe!!
John
There was so much liquid I never thought it would turn out but it was excellent. I topped it with chopped walnuts.
Victoria Kolda
May I use espresso rather than strongly brewed coffee? I only have a Keurig and instant coffee, neither being strong.
Also, could I add crumble to the top of the cake rather than the frosting ? Or would that throw off the recipe? Could I substitute the crumble for the frosting in its entirety?
nellie
I am confused. It is written 8 oz 2 sticks of butter.
Is it 8 oz of butter
or
is it 2 sticks of butter?
Mikey
It is 2 sticks of butter, which equates to about 8 ounces.
I was confused about it too, almost thinking it required 16 ounces of butter. At the last moment, I realised that would overwhelm the sauce.
Hope that helps, and answers your question.
Lucy
can I halve the recipe if I only want to make it one layer?
Catarina
I think I should have cooled the coffee and the milk/butter mixture. My cake batter was thin and runny and the cake came out think and super dense, almost like it separated during baking. I’ll have to try it again with cooled mixtures.
Rebecca
Oh my gosh!!! Really good cake. This recipe needs to be all over the internet. Thank you for sharing
Karen
I just took it out of the oven and haven’t tried it yet, but it smells wonderful! I was concerned that the batter was very thin and runny though.
Angela
Hola Erica!
I’m so happy I finally found a real recipe for a torta de café Colombiana. My husband loved it!!!
I followed your recipe, but changed the Coffee frosting, and used a vanilla flavored instead, and topped it off with walnuts to add that crunchiness.
Thanks so much for posting this recipe. I hope you keep posting more!
Lani
Hi ! I just want to ask if I can turn this wonderful cake of yours into cupcakes? Any suggestions for the oven temperature and baking time? Thanks in advance.
Britni
I never write reviews, but I must say, I come back to this recipe every single year. My partner calls this his “birthday cake” and always requests it. Now that we have a kid running around, it can be a lot of work, but I will continue to make this for every one of his birthdays and other special occasions throughout the years. I am not much of a baker, but this recipe is easy to follow as well!
I use bustelo in the percolator for the extra strong coffee and instant vanilla coffee for the icing. I also think I put way more chocolate than called for into the icing haha. But this cake has a really great and rich coffee flavor. yum!
Victoria Kolda
May I use espresso rather than strongly brewed coffee? I only have a Keurig and instant coffee, neither being strong.
SOUMI BANDYOPADHYAY
Hi!
I like your recipe as it is so simple.
However, I have a question. You said 1 cup coffee. Is it one cup of coffee powder or a cup or brewed coffee?
Looking forward to your reply.
chickrandi
I’m not the expert here but I used one cup of strongly brewed coffee in the cake and a coffee powder for the icing. It turned out perfect! I’m making this for the third time now. My husband keeps requesting it 🙂
Soumi Bandyopadhyay
Thanks a ton! It worked beautifully