Cappuccino cake

This is a classic sponge cake, amongst one of the easiest but also delicious cakes to make. I normally make and eat this when I need to stay up, but don't really fancy coffee. This cake is marvellously buttery and rich in flavour, goes very well with a cup of tea as per always. 

Ingredients:

• 175g self raising flour
• 100g unsalted butter
• 250g golden caster sugar (sometimes I play around with the sugar a bit, 200g caster + 50g icing sugar also works very nicely)
• 4 medium eggs
• 1 heaped tsp baking powder
• 50g coco powder
• 50ml milk (full fat or semi-skimmed)
• hot water 
• 1 tsp of coffee granule
• 250ml double cream

1. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C
2. Line the bottom of 2x23cm (9 inch) baking trays with baking parchment and grease the side of the tins
3. Weigh and dissolve coco powder with enough boiling water to make a smooth, thin and runny paste (no more than 8 tbsps)
4. Let coco paste cool down (this should be fairly quick, no more than 20 minutes)
5. Add sugar, butter, self raising flour, baking powder to coco paste and mix gently
6. Add 1/3 of milk at a time to the dry ingredients and mix continuously
7. Add 1 egg at a time to the mixture and mix very gently until just combined, repeat until all the eggs have been added, careful not to over mix. The mixture should be smooth and just run off the spoon
8. Divide the cake mixture equally into the two baking trays and bake for about 30-35 minutes
9. Test whether cake is baked with a thin skewer/sharp knife, the blade should come out completely clean
10. Let cake cool down slightly for 10 minutes in the tin and remove baking parchment from the cakes and let it cool down completely before spreading the filling (I leave it to cool down for at least 90 minutes to 2 hours to make sure it's completely cold)
11. To make the filling, whisk double cream until stiff peaks (Make your life easier here by using an electric whisk, unless you want to train your arm muscles, which defies the whole point of eating cakes and enjoy yourself altogether)
12. Use enough hot water to dissolve coffee granules completely (1-2 tsp) and let it cool down for 5-10 minutes
13. Add coffee to whisked cream and fold it in completely, if you find the taste too strong at this stage, you can add 1-2 tsps of icing sugar and fold it in with the coffee into the cream
14. Use half of the cream for the filling and the other half on the top
15. Dust the surface with coco powder, I like to have a bit of chocolate on top, so I chopped up a little bit of plain chocolate and sprinkled them on the cake to decorate. Similarly, marshmallows also work well

This cake should be very easy to make, but you also risk having so much coffee and coco powder during the baking procedure and keep yourself up all night if you are doing it in the evening. Tip, taste coffee cream as little as possible if you intend to go to bed soon after finishing the cake!