Rice Cooker Dalgona Coffee Cake (No-Oven Coffee Cake with Whipped Coffee Cream)

No oven? No problem. This Dalgona coffee cake bakes right in a rice cooker, then gets frosted with silky coffee whipped cream and crowned with a fluffy layer of whipped Dalgona coffee. Grab a spoon.

Dalgona coffee, the whipped Korean-style coffee foam, started life as a drink. This recipe, shared by a member of the Thai cooking community Pantip.com known as Khamer Inter, turns it into cake decoration instead: a soft, cocoa-tinged coffee sponge cooked in an ordinary rice cooker, layered with fresh coffee cream and finished with a cap of Dalgona foam. If you love coffee, this one is for you.

Ingredients

Coffee cake

• 15 g (1 tablespoon) instant coffee
• 75 g (5 tablespoons) hot water
• 3 egg yolks (large eggs)
• 50 g (3 tablespoons) evaporated milk
• 120 g (½ cup plus 2 tablespoons) sugar (portion 1)
• 95 g (7 tablespoons) vegetable oil
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 145 g (1¼ cups) cake flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 15 g (2 tablespoons) cocoa powder
• 3 egg whites
• 60 g (5 tablespoons) sugar (portion 2)

Dalgona coffee foam

• 5 tablespoons instant coffee
• 5 tablespoons hot water
• 5 tablespoons sugar

Coffee whipped cream

• ½ tablespoon instant coffee
• ½ tablespoon hot water
• 1–2 tablespoons sugar
• 150 ml (⅔ cup) heavy whipping cream

Note: if you like your coffee bitter, feel free to skip the sugar in the cream.

Instructions

1. Dissolve the 15 g of instant coffee in the hot water and let it cool completely.
2. Separate the eggs. Whisk the yolks with sugar (portion 1) until pale and creamy, then whisk in the evaporated milk.
3. Add the cooled coffee and the oil and whisk until fully combined.
4. Sift in the cake flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda and baking powder and mix until smooth. Set aside.
5. In a clean bowl, beat the egg whites until foamy, then gradually add sugar (portion 2) and beat to soft peaks.
6. Fold the meringue into the coffee batter in about three additions, keeping as much air as possible.
7. Lightly oil the rice cooker pot, pour in the batter and start a normal cook cycle. In a 1-liter rice cooker the cake takes about 1 hour 20 minutes; if the first cycle finishes and the center is still wet, wait a few minutes and run another cycle until a skewer comes out clean.
8. Let the cake cool completely, then slice it horizontally into as many layers as you like.
9. For the coffee whipped cream, dissolve the ½ tablespoon of coffee in the hot water and cool. Whip the cream until foamy, add the sugar and coffee, and continue whipping to soft peaks.
10. For the Dalgona foam, combine the coffee, sugar and hot water and whisk (an electric mixer helps) until thick, pale and fluffy.
11. Spread the coffee whipped cream between the layers and over the cake, then top with the Dalgona foam. Scatter with nuts if you like.

Tips

• Chill the finished cake for at least 1 hour before serving; the colder it is, the better it tastes.
• Any standard rice cooker works. The original was made in a 1.0-liter model, so a larger cooker will give a flatter cake and may cook a little faster.