Coffee Walnut Loaf Cake (2024)

One-bowl Coffee Walnut Loaf Cake

This homely coffee and walnut loaf cake is so delicious and super easy to make. Coffee and walnut are always a perfect combo and both play a starring role in this ultimate comfort cake. It’s truly a treat, take a break, put the kettle on and indulge yourself, you deserve it.

If you don’t like flour, I highly recommend you try my FLOURLESS walnut Swiss roll with coffee cream. This recipe is also highlight this perfect combo of coffee and walnut but in other form.

I would like to share with you this homely coffee walnut loaf cake. Do you ever fancy grabbing a slice of cake at the counter to go along with a cup of coffee in a coffee shop? I always do. Biggest temptations are banana cake or just a slice of rich chocolate cake. For me, this is the moment of pure indulgence!

Cake is for Life NOT just for Birthdays!

Watch this video tutorial

Want to see exactly how I make this delightful Coffee Walnut Loaf Cake? Check out this full video tutorial for a step-by-step guide.

My inspiration

This recipe was inspired by Nigella Lawson, an English food writer and cooking show host. One day, I found this on my feed on Instagram: Nigella is one of my key people to follow. I saw her post a Coffee Walnut Layer Cake with coffee buttercream frosting and with some half walnut decorations. Oh! Wow! I have to make this cake!

However, I just want a simple version, not quite as fancy as Nigella’s. So I baked it in a loaf tin instead of a round baking tin. Once it’s done, you just need to un-mould the cake and let it cool completely on a wire rack. Then cut a slice (or slices) with a cup of coffee. Hmmm… yummy!

So I made some changes to suit my taste. This is what I did:.

My version of Coffee Walnut Loaf Cake

1. Reduce the amount of sugar

This is the most frequently asked question when people ask me to bake a cake for them. In this recipe, that’s what I did and it worked really well. I reduced 50g of caster sugar from the original recipe. The taste of the cake turned out really nice, not overly sweet but with a hint of sweetness to compensate the strong taste of coffee. It really works!

If you want to reduce even more sugar in this recipe, you can try but remember every cake contains sugar. Don’t attempt to reduce more than 20% of the sugar as it will affect the structure of the cake – or it will turn out tasteless. We don’t want to spend all the effort to make batter and bake the cake and then have it turn out that it doesn’t taste good.

2. Add the vanilla extract

The original recipe doesn’t use any vanilla extract. I wanted to enhance the flavour more, so I added ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract. Remember to use a high quality of extract. Try to avoid using an artificial one because it will completely affect the taste of the cake. If you don’t have a high quality one, better to omit it. This is the vanilla extract I use in this recipe.

3. Use the stand mixer

If you don’t have a stand mixer or hand mixer, don’t worry. The original recipe is mixed with a food processor – all the dry ingredients are added and blended in the processor first, including the walnuts. With this method, the walnuts will become a powder like texture (I’ll talk about the walnuts below). Following the original method, you then add the wet ingredients and blend them together until it turn into a cake mixture, which you simply bake.

Because of the stand mixer is on the counter top in my kitchen, I was too lazy to take the food processor out from the cupboard! So, I experimented using the stand mixer instead of food processor. Success – I’m glad to say it turned out a really nice cake. It was soft and moist, my husband and I were still tucking into it after two days (that’s as long as it lasted).

If you are interested in investing a stand mixer or hand mixer, it definitely worths to check out my Top 10 essential tools for beginners – Part 1 & Part 2. I share with you all how to make the right decision on investing tools for your baking journey to suit your personal preference.

4. Prepare the walnuts

As I mentioned, I made a different choice with the walnuts as I wanted to have some small pieces of walnut to bite. Instead of powdering, I roughly chopped them and it gave the cake great texture. So, it depends on what you want or who you bake for. If it is for your young kids, I would recommend you to blitz to a powder texture.

Bake this delightful Coffee Walnut Loaf Cake

Give this recipe a try! Let me know how it goes for you! I love connecting and seeing your pictures. It really makes my day.

More tasty recipes for your next bakes

• Banana Walnut Cake (video tutorial) – wisely use up the leftover bananas!
• Banana Cinnamon Bundt Cake – a beautiful cake that you’ll dive for!
• Flourless Walnut Swiss Roll with Coffee Cream (video tutorial) – an amazing cake without flour!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

If you’ve tried my Coffee Walnut Loaf Cake recipe please feel free to leave me a comment and let me know what you thought. The more we chat the more I know what recipes I should be making and sharing. If you have any recipe suggestions I would also love to hear them.

Rating the recipe once you’ve made Coffee Walnut Loaf Cake may also help other readers decide whether to make my bakes, so I would love it if you could come back and let everyone know what you think.

Happy baking! See you in the next post!