When my grandmother turned 88 last month, I grasped at yet another fitting opportunity to bake something. Something great. Something new. And by ‘new’ I mean: something I have never made before. Because a mocha cake is all but new. It is a Dutch patisserie-classic as old as, well, my grandmother. Its status is therefore not really hip and happening, but needless to say, my grandmother loved it — although frankly I’m not quite sure what’s left of her tastebuds. Fortunately, the rest of the family enjoyed it as well.

It consisted of two layers of vanilla sponge, with mocha buttercream in between & on the outside. A typical mocha cake has sides decorated with candied hazelnut bits, buttercream rosettes and some kind of chocolate decoration. But that’s really as far as the chocolate goes with this cake: mocha has the leading part.