Coffee Cake

When I first started reading English-language cookbooks I was baffled by coffee cake recipes that had no coffee inside. You see, in Estonia we bake and eat lots of cakes (I've baked a cake to go with coffee each day this week), but they're not called "kohvikook" or "coffee cake". They're called just cakes, and we enjoy them with coffee. Meanwhile, I've been baking a coffee cake - that is, a cake that contains coffee crumbs - for over a decade now. And here's a recipe - originally from a Finnish food magazine in early 1990s, and I've made it over and over again. There's something about eating a coffee cake while drinking coffee, you see.

Note that I use simple ground coffee in the cake, not the instant kind. K. originally thought there were poppy seeds in the cake :P

Coffee Cake Recipe
(Kohvikook)

250 g unsalted butter, at room temperature
250 ml / 1 cup / 225 g caster sugar
3 eggs
500 ml / 2 cups all-purpose/plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
3 heaped Tbsp ground coffee
2 tsp vanilla sugar
50 ml / 3-4 Tbsp milk

For the frosting:
4 Tbsp cold coffee or coffee liqueur
appr. 200 g icing sugar

For decoration:
coffee bean shaped chocolate

Cream butter and sugar until pale, then whisk in eggs, one at a time.
Measure dry ingredients into a bowl, mix thoroughly and then stir into the butter and egg mixture alongside with milk. The resulting batter is quite thick, but still spoonable.
Spoon the batter into a buttered small oven tray (f.ex. 30x30 cm). Bake in the middle of a pre-heated 175 C oven for about 25 minutes, until the cake is cooked (test for doneness with a small wooden cocktail stick).
Let cool.
Mix the coffee and icing sugar into a glossy frosting and drizzle over the cake. Decorate with chocolate 'coffee beans'.