Can I Make A Larger Coffee And Walnut Layer Cake?

Our answer

Nigella's Coffee And Walnut Layer Cake (from KITCHEN) is a perennial favourite, with layers of walnut studded sponge sandwiched and toooped with a strong coffee-flavoured buttercream. The sponge layers are baked in 20cm (8-inch) round cake pans.

To go from this size of cake pan to 23cm (9-inch) cake pans usually means that you need to increase the recipe quantities by 25%, so you make one-and-one-quarter of the original recipe. As the recipe is made with 4 eggs, it is not too tricky to scale up the ingredients quantities. The oven temperature should remain the same but the cake layers will take longer to bake, probably 30 minutes. Keep a close eye on the sponges after 25 minutes and the layers are baked when they are risen, firm on top and cake tester inserted into the centres comes out clean. You should also increase the buttercream quantities by 25% for the larger cake. However, please note that as we have not tried the larger cake ourselves, we are unable to guarantee the results.