Coffee and Walnut Cupcakes

Are you wondering what to get your mum for Mother’s Day? Would you like to make her something this year instead of buying a present? Or are you a dad with small children who’d like to get the kids to bake something yummy for their mummy? These easy to make, cute little Coffee and Walnut Cupcakes may be just the thing you are looking for! Much easier than making a whole cake,  but still with all that yummy coffee and walnut flavour AND kids can do most of it! (I made these actual cupcakes with my 5 and 7 year old and they only needed a little help.) Perfect! I would be delighted if I got these for Mother’s Day…maybe your mum will too! 🙂

Alternatively, if you are stumbling upon this post in a few weeks’ or years’ time…they are just great cupcakes. They would be perfect to make with the kids on a bored wet afternoon or for a bake sale or for anything really.

If you are allergic to nuts, or just don’t like them (Really??? They are so nice!!) then just leave them out. The cupcakes will still work just fine. You could use coffee beans to decorate them, instead.

If you don’t like coffee. You can leave out the coffee and, do you know what? They still taste great!

If you don’t like coffee AND walnuts…then I don’t think we can be friends…only kidding. I am very happy to be your friend, but I don’t understand how anyone could not like coffee and walnuts! They are two of my favourite things!! But seriously these cupcakes are so versatile. If you leave out the coffee AND the walnuts, you could add in a teaspoon of vanilla extract instead to make them really vanillary – yum (please don’t tell me you don’t like vanilla either???) and decorate with something else…rose petals and/or pistachio nuts would look pretty if they are for Mother’s Day or hundreds and thousands, maybe, if they are for a school bake sale.

To make the strong black coffee, either use a strong espresso, if you have a coffee machine, or dissolve 1 teaspoonful of instant coffee granules in 1 tablespoonful of boiling hot water (I have never had much luck when using cold water) for each tablespoonful of coffee you need. Either way, leave the coffee to cool before using it in your cake and icing.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT THE WALNUTS: Make sure you pick out 24 nice ones for decoration FIRST before chopping up the rest to use in the cupcakes. Otherwise you might find you have used all the good ones in your cupcakes and are left with all the yucky broken ones to decorate the cupcakes. I found this was an excellent job to give my kids. I told them to pick out the 24 most beautiful walnuts, plus a couple of spares, and it kept them absorbed for ages – and they were much more perfectionist about it than me!

Do you like my cupcake cases, by the way? I bought these at Waitrose and I think they are just gorgeous! Perfect for Mother’s Day. They are the mini size and this recipe is for 24 mini sized cupcakes. If you want to make standard sized cupcakes this amount of mixture will only make 18. (Note: mini cupcake cases are 4.5cm across the base and 2.5cm high, standard cupcake cases are 5cm across the base and 3.5cm high and irritatingly the packaging/product description often doesn’t say!)

I have suggested this recipe takes 25 minutes prep time – that’s how long it takes me to make, ice and decorate them on my own. If I am making these with my children, it takes more like 45 minutes! (And there is generally more washing up too!)

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4 from 1 vote

Coffee and Walnut Cupcakes

Course Cake, Dessert, Pudding

Cuisine British

Prep Time 25 minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes

Total Time 40 minutes

Servings 24

Author Eb Gargano

Ingredients

Cupcakes

• 175 g butter or margarine, if you prefer, softened
• 175 g caster sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 175 g self raising flour
• 50 g walnuts
• 2 tablespoons of strong black coffee

Icing and Decoration

• 50 g butter or margarine, softened
• 100 g icing sugar sieved (this is really important – don’t ever consider not sieving!)
• 1 tablespoon strong black coffee
• 24 nice looking walnuts roughly 30g, I just used the rest of a 100g packet

Instructions

Cupcakes

• Pick out 24 really nice walnuts from your packet and set aside for decorating the cupcakes later. Weigh out 50g of the remaining walnuts and chop finely, or just break them into small pieces with your fingers.
• Preheat your oven to 170C. Put 24 mini cupcake cases in the holes of a bun tin.
• In a large bowl, mix together the butter and sugar thoroughly, until the mixture starts to look a little bit paler.
• Add in one egg at a time and stir until each egg is completely mixed in before adding the next one.
• Add in half the flour and stir gently until just combined. Add in the remaining flour and, again, stir gently until the flour is just combined.
• Add in the finely chopped walnuts and the strong black coffee and stir just enough to ensure the walnuts are evenly distributed.
• Divide the mixture between the cupcake cases. (I find 1 tablespoon of mixture per cupcake case is about right.)
• Put the cupcakes in your preheated oven for 13 minutes. After 13 minutes, get them out and check for doneness by pressing the tops, if they make a little crunchy sound, pop them in for two more minutes. If they don’t make a sound when you press the top, they are done. Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the bun tray.

Icing and Decoration

• Don’t try and ice the cupcakes until they are completely cold! (They take about 1 hour to cool.)
• Put the softened butter and sieved icing sugar in a bowl and beat together until smooth. Add in the coffee and beat again until evenly coloured.
• Using a regular table knife, smooth a little of the icing onto the top of each cupcake and top with a walnut.

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For more Easy Peasy Cakes, Desserts and Puddings, why not check out my Recipe Collection? You can find more Recipe Collections down the side of this page – just click on the one that takes your fancy!