Marbled Mocha Cake

On a warm spring afternoon everybody loves a teatime treat. There's few that wouldn't appreciate this coffee and chocolate flavoured cake. It's luscious and light and the mascarpone icing is to die for doll, with crunchy chocolate-covered coffee beans, available from most good supermarkets, to make a speedy decoration.

For variety, use Maltesers, Planets or Revels to scatter over the top of the cake.

Ingredients:
For the Cake:
225g butter, plus extra for greesing the tin
30ml cocoa
30-45ml instant coffee
2ml vanilla extract
225g golden caster sugar
225g flour
20ml baking powder
4 eggs

For the Coffee Icing:
2 x 250g tubs mascarpone
85g golden caster sugar
20ml instant coffee dissolved in 20ml boiling water

To Decorate:
plain chocolate coffee beans (or Maltesers, Planets or Revels)
Cocoa

Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C. Line the baes of 2 buttered 20cm sandwich tins with baking paper.
Mix the cocoa with 30ml boiling water in a medium bowl until smooth. In a cup, mix the coffee with 15ml boiling water, add the vanilla extract and stir to dissolve.
Put the butter, sugar and flour, baking powder and eggs in a large bowl and beat until smooth. spoon half the mixture onto the cocoa and beat well. Flavour the remaining mixture with the dissolved coffee. Spoon alternate dollops of mixture into the sandwich tins and tap sharply to allow the mixes to join and level. Run a skewer through the mixes to marble them together, but don't blend too much. You don't want them completely combined.
Bake for 25 minutes or until set and springy when touched in the centre of each pan. Cool for 10 minutes in the tin, then remove the cakes from their tins and continue cooling on a wire rack.
For the icing, beat the mascarpone with the sugar and coffee until well mixed. When the cakes have cooled, Strip away the lining paper. Sandwich the cakes together with some of the icing, ten use the rest to swirl on top. Scatter with coffee beans (or chocolate candy balls) and dust with a little cocoa.