Vanilla Coffee Cake with Creamy Coffee Buttercream Frosting
If you love coffee, you’re going to love this Vanilla Coffee Cake with Cream Coffee Buttercream Frosting. It’s a moist, coffee-infused cake with hints of chocolate and vanilla, topped with delicious coffee-flavored buttercream.
Last Sunday our pastor’s wife asked me if maybe I could bake some coffee-flavored cupcakes for her for a wedding shower. I told her I’d never made coffee-flavored cake or cupcakes before, but I’d certainly give it a try!
Since I didn’t want to wait until the actual wedding shower to play with a recipe, and today was my MawMaw’s 81st birthday, it seemed like a good enough reason to bake a cake!
My friend Tara gave sent me a link to what appears to be an awesome recipe (a cupcake you must see and I will be trying Tara!), but I didn’t have everything on hand to make that, so I decided to “wing it” and come up with my own recipe.
Vanilla Coffee Cake with Creamy Coffee Buttercream Frosting
What I ended up doing was altering my usual white cake recipe for the cake by simply adding some {very strong} instant coffee and some extra vanilla.
For the frosting, I combined my cream cheese buttercream recipe plus some brown sugar (inspired by this Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes recipe) and of course some coffee…and a little chocolate at the end.
To see some variations on the frosting, visit this post: Vanilla Coffee Cupcakes with Three Frostings!
Vanilla Coffee Cake with Creamy Coffee Buttercream Frosting
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 20 1x
Description
If you love coffee, you’re going to love this Vanilla Coffee Cake with Cream Coffee Buttercream Frosting. It’s a moist, coffee-infused cake with hints of chocolate and vanilla, topped with delicious coffee-flavored buttercream.
Ingredients
- 1 White or Yellow Cake Mix (I prefer Pillsbury)
- 3 eggs
- 1/3 cup of oil
- 8 ounces of sour cream
- 1 box instant French Vanilla Pudding mix
- 1 cup semi-sweet mini chocolate chips (optional)
- 2 teaspoons of vanilla
- 1 tablespoon of instant coffee (I used Nescafe samples)
- 1/2 cup warm water
For the Frosting
- 1 stick of butter, at room temperature
- 4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup shortening (3.5 oz)
- 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
- 2 pounds confectioners sugar
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 3–5 tablespoons milk
- 1 tablespoon of instant coffee, dissolved in 1 tablespoon of water (optional)
- 1/2 – 3/4 cup cocoa powder (optional)
Instructions
- For the cake, preheat oven to 325°. Mix water and instant coffee. Heat in a microwave for 30 seconds and stir to dissolve. Allow to cool (I stuck it in the freezer for a few minutes) before mixing in. Mix all ingredients except the chocolate chips (including the cooled coffee). Beat on medium until the batter is very smooth. Gently stir in the chocolate chips, if desired.
- Pour into 2 prepared 8″ pans and bake for 20-25 minutes (test with toothpick). If using cupcakes, it makes about 30 cupcakes and you’ll need to bake for 18-20 minutes.
- For the frosting, cream the butter, cream cheese and shortening together until smooth. Add in the brown sugar and mix well. Then add the confectioners sugar 1 cup at a time until well combined (it will be a little dry). Pour in the vanilla and add milk until desired texture is obtained.
- For the piping on this cake, I added in some cocoa powder to make it brown (and chocolatey). For other variations on this frosting, visit this post: Vanilla Coffee Cupcakes with Three Frostings
- Prep Time: 15
- Cook Time: 25
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
I really wish I had gotten a picture of this cake once cut, but we cut it at the nursing home for MawMaw’s birthday and there were about 13 of us in my MawMaw’s two person room.
Totally unrelated, but I love this picture of me and my MawMaw. She is the sweetest soul I’ve ever met and it’s such a joy to bake for her.
So…there wasn’t much room to breath in her nursing home room, let alone pull out a camera and snap a bunch of pictures. Besides, I took turns holding one of my three youngest children throughout the stay so I had a shortage of hands.
Just imagine that the inside was beautiful pale moist coffee-colored cake with about a half inch of delicious creamy icing between two layers. I opted to not add the chocolate chips to her cake, but I did add some to the cupcakes and either way…delicious!!
Do any of you have recipes for coffee-flavored cake and/or icing? I’d love to see them! I still plan to make Tara’s cupcakes, but for today, these worked beautifully!
PS – I’m still waiting to hear if our pastor’s wife liked them. I left her a few of them at the church tonight but didn’t get a chance to talk to her afterwards and see what she thought!
Do you have any questions about this recipe? Leave them in the comments and I’ll answer if I can!!
While you’re here, be sure to check out these Vanilla Coffee Cupcakes… they are oh-so-good!
Vanilla Coffee Cupcakes with Three Frostings
Have you ever tried emulsions…the coffee one is excellent!
When you say 1 box of white cake mix, is that the current size (15.25 oz) or do you add additional 3 oz of another mix? Also, I’m wanting to use 9″ pans, will this recipe be enough or do I need to make another recipe?
Would that amount of icing be enough to ice 2-9″layers? I made this with 8” pans before, but need it to be slightly larger this time. Seems like I was stretching the icing before.
I always add the extra 3 oz. these days and no, I don’t think it would be enough for 9″ pans. I’d probably also double the frosting!
Very tasty recipe & you gave me loads of ideas! I used green cupcake liners, drizzled caramel on top, stuck a lil green straw in & called it a Caramel Frappe for Secretary’s Day!
Hi! I’m trying to make the coffee cupcakes. I was wondering if I have to follow the ingredients on the cake mix or ignore them.
Ignore then and just use the ingredients listed in the recipe box.