Coffee and Walnut Cupcakes

4.80 from 5 votes

All the flavours of a coffee and walnut cake in cupcake form! These easy peasy Coffee and Walnut Cupcakes are quick and easy to make, super simple to decorate (even if you have no cake decoration skills!) and taste amazing.

Course Cake, Dessert, Pudding

Cuisine British

Prep Time 25

Cook Time 15

Total Time 40

Servings cupcakes

Calories 237kcal

Author Eb Gargano

Ingredients

Cupcakes

225 g butter (or margarine, if you prefer), softened
225 g caster sugar
4 large eggs at room temperature
225 g self raising flour
50 g walnuts chopped finely (See Note 1)
2 tablespoons of strong black coffee (See Note 2)

Icing and Decoration

100 g butter (or margarine, if you prefer), softened
200 g icing sugar sieved
2 tablespoons strong black coffee (See Note 2)
24 nice looking walnuts roughly 30g (1oz), I just used the rest of a 100g packet (See Note 1)

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

Cupcakes

Pick out 24 really nice walnuts from your packet and set aside for decorating the cupcakes later. Weigh out 50g (1¾oz) of the remaining walnuts and chop finely, or just break them into small pieces with your fingers.
Preheat your oven to 180C / 160C fan / gas mark 4 / 350F. Put 24 cupcake cases in the holes of a cupcake tin. (See Note 3.)
In a large bowl, beat 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 heaped 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 cupcake 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 mixed in.
Using a regular table knife, smooth a little of the icing onto the top of each cupcake and top with a walnut.

Video

Notes

Make sure you pick out 24 nice walnuts 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.
The best way to put coffee into coffee and walnut cupcakes is to mix instant coffee granules with boiling water: 1 tablespoon of boiling water for every 1 teaspoon of instant coffee granules. For this recipe I use 2 teaspoons instant coffee (dissolved in 2 tablespoons boiling water) in the cake batter and 2 teaspoons instant coffee (dissolved in 2 tablespoons boiling water) in the buttercream.
Use small cupcake cases which are 4.5cm (1¾inches) across the base and 3cm (1¼inches) deep
Suitable for freezing. (Undecorated only)
Nutrition information is approximate and meant as a guideline only.

Nutrition