Chocolate Cake with Coffee Filling

I know I have been on a really long hiatus from blogging .. I haven't had time to bake in so long .. all I have done is make a pile of recipes to try which hopefully I plan to try once I am free from this long and busy wedding season ..

This is a cake I made for a close friend of mine on her birthday .. She absolutely loves desserts and I wanted to do something special for her .. Initially I had planned to send her at least three goodies and one cake to work (one brownies, one cookies and one peanut butter) .. the peanut butter idea fell apart due to the realization that I can't make a cake and three goodies on a weekday .. but I did manage to send her brownies and chocolate chip cookies and I made the cake for her birthday lunch with friends

This is not a cake based on a single recipe, just an amalgamation of different recipes with some tweaking .. The only inspiration behind this cake was that I wanted to do something different, by which it had to be a non-chocolate cake.  I decided on coffee as a flavor filld with a pastry cream, topped with a coffee-chocolate ganache and a sprinkling of almonds for some crunch ..
Coffee Cake

4 eggs
Sugar - 200g
Butter - 200g
Flour - 200g
Baking powder - 1 tsp
Instant Coffee - 2 tsp mixed with a bit of water

Pre-heat oven at 170 C.
Beat butter and sugar together. Add eggs one at a time and beat well. Then add flour and baking powder mixture (both need to be sifted together earlier). Beat together. Add the coffee mixture.

Bake for 40 minutes.

For the Pastry Cream
I follow the pastry cream recipe that is there at JoyofBaking (link given below). The amount of pastry cream will be quite a lot since I only used about 1 cup as it was a small cake, however, the leftover amount can be refrigerated and used for other cakes and desserts.
Pastry Cream Recipe - JoyofBaking

For the glaze
4 oz milk chocolate
200 grams cream
1 tbsp coffee

Warm cream, either on stove or in the microwave, then add chopped up chocolate. Mix both together till the chocolate melts, and it makes a smooth mixture. Add the coffee and taste the glaze. In case more chocolate/coffee is needed, then add cocoa powder or coffee powder accordingly.

In order to assemble the cake, first cool the coffee cake, then split it in half. Fill the cake with pastry cream. Then on top, spread the coffee chocolate glaze and sprinkle with almonds.