Recipe: Coffee and cinnamon sponge cake

This cake is a twist on the classic Viccy sponge. If cream and lashings of strawberry jam isn't your idea of a tea time treat, it's easy enough to spice things up by adding simple ingredients and flavourings to your mixture.

With this recipe, the cinnamon makes the cake a bit more interesting, giving it a lovely spicy flavour, while adding flavoured coffee to the buttercream gives it more of a kick.

And the best thing? It takes no time at all to whip up one of these cakes. Roughly fifteen minutes for the sponge - quicker if you have a lovely shiny bender - and while it's cooking, about ten minutes to prepare the buttercream.

So pour yourself a hot, frothy latte and enjoy a lovely (and speedy) little treat!

Ingredients

Cake

200g salted butter

200g sugar

2 eggs

200g self-raising flour

2tsp cinnamon

4 small pinches baking powder

Coffee buttercream

125g salted butter

200g icing sugar

50ml strong espresso coffee (preferably flavoured, I used Cherizena Cider Apple)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

2. Cream the butter and then stir in the sugar and eggs to make the wet mixture.

3. Mix together the flour, cinnamon and baking powder and then add to the wet mixture and stir well.

4. Prepare the tin by greasing the bowl.

5. Bake for 30 minutes, while the cake is baking blend a mix of 1 part sugar and 1 part cinnamon. When the cake has baked for 30 minutes sprinkle the cinnamon sugar on the top and bake for a further 5 minutes.

6. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes and then turn out onto a cooling rack.

7. When the cake has completely cooled prepare the coffee buttercream by beating the butter and icing sugar together and then add the espresso slowly and whip together. My tip: use a flavoured coffee for additional flavour, I used Cherizena’s Cider Apple coffee, while the editor's mum preferred the Grand Marnier flavour. So choose something you love and give it a whirl!

8. Slice the cake in half, so you end up with two ‘shorter’ cakes (like a Victoria sponge) and paste the buttercream on the bottom layer, and then add the top layer so it forms a sandwich.

9. You’re finished – enjoy!

Louise balances her many daydreams with the reality of being an animal scientist. So by day she’s lab-coated and covered in animal bits and by night she’s a knitter, obsessive reader, cat-botherer and midnight baker. She lives in Yorkshire with a husband, bunnies and cats. She loves PJ Harvey, pastel hair and drinks cola obsessively.