‘Six eggs’ means a big cake and this is great for a crowd. Rich enough to be a pudding but also good at tea time. The recipe comes from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Simple where he acknowledges a recipe in Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Cake Bible. It is a ‘pound cake’ which I first tasted when the owner of the country store in Orient, L I cooked it to serve.

The changes I make are to use a strong coffee in place of instant coffee, not to add two tablespoons of cocoa powder to the coffee (listed here as optional) and to put a few drops of vanilla essence in place of the coffee used in the icing. I also put it together in the normal ‘sponge cake’ way, creaming the eggs and sugar together first and adding the rest by degrees which is in direct contrast to the method RLB and YO advocate. Both work.

You will need a 23cm bundt/savarin/ring cake tin, preferably not fluted, in which to cook the cake.

Oven at 175°C

6 eggs
300g butter, softened
300g caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
200g self-raising flour
100g plain flour
Pinch of salt
1tsp cardamon seeds, ground
90ml full-fat milk plus 20ml more for the coffee
3 tbsp ground coffee
2 tsp Dutch processed cocoa powder (or any good quality cocoa powder), optional

For the icing

45ml full fat milk, warmed
240G icing sugar
30g unsalted butter, softened
A few drops of vanilla essence

Start by taking the cardamon seeds from their pods and grinding them with a pestle and mortar to have ready for use. Grease the cake tin and flour it lightly.

Using 20ml of milk, make a very strong coffee in a cafetière. Pour into a cup and add cocoa powder (if using). Stir to dissolve. You could also make a double espresso to use in place of the cafetière coffee.

Cream the caster sugar and the butter until light. Briefly whisk together the milk, eggs and vanilla essence. Add this alternately with the flours and salt to the creamed butter and sugar. Mix well.

Divide the cake mixture into two basins. To one add the coffee and to the other the ground cardamon seeds and mix carefully.

Put the mixtures into the cake tin, alternating large spoonfuls of each. Now comes the fun part – ‘marbling’ the cake. I use the flat side of a knife and run this in a wave through the cake, trying to touch each quarter if the cake as if it were a clock. You may want to add more swirls but don’t be too busy or the mixtures will merge.

Bake for 40-45 minutes or until the cake feels firm and a skewer inserted comes out clean. Leave for 10 minutes before running a knife round the cake and inserting it onto a wire rack.

When the cake is cool, make the icing by combining all the ingredients in a small mixing bowl and whisking until smooth and thick. Drip unevenly over and down the sides of the cake.