Recipe French people seldom bake cakes at home. And why should they with several fabulous patisseries in most neighborhoods? Still, a popular homemade cake is the Gateau Moka, an old-fashioned sponge cake with coffee butter cream and toasted almonds. It is a bit of work, and a lot of dishes. The cake layer is a variation on the fiendishly tricky génoise cake. But this sponge cake will give you no trouble, and  you can be proud when you're done.

The HOT MILK SPONGE CAKE

• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups sifted cake flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 eggs
• 1  1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350F. Foil and butter two 9" round pans.
Heat the milk and the butter until close to boiling.
Sift the flour and the baking powder together carefully.
In a stand mixer, with the whisking arm, beat the eggs on high speed for a minute and add the sugar very slowly, over a minute or two. Keep beating for about five minutes, until very fluffy.

Now you have to be ready to act fast.

Reduce the speed of the mixer to slow and add the vanilla, then the hot milk in a steady stream. Immediately, add all the flour at once. Whisk a bit, scrape the sides, whisk a bit again. Try not to deflate the batter while incorporating the flour.

Pour the runny batter into the pans and place quickly on the lower rack in the oven.

Set a timer for 25 minutes.

Give your layers a half turn, and bake them for five to ten more minutes. The cakes are ready when slightly golden, rather firm to a gentle touch, and when they start making a faint crackling noise when you listen closely.

Cool the cakes completely in the pans.

The SYRUP

1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup water
3 tablespoons liquor of your choice (rum / kahlùa / crème de cacao)

Heat until the sugar is dissolved. Cool completely.

The BUTTER CREAM

2 sticks (8 oz) unsalted butter, not rock hard, but not soft
1 egg
6 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup
2 tablespoons hot water (I use espresso)
1 tablespoon instant coffee

Beat the egg thoroughly.
Cut up the butter in cubes.
Dissolve the instant coffee in the water.
Heat the sugar and the corn syrup on a high fire until the whole mixture is bubbling, but no longer than that.
Start beating your egg again, and pour the murderously hot sugar mixture over the egg while beating.
Keep beating this mixture until lukewarm.
Beat in the butter, a few cubes at a time.
When all the butter is in, sooner or later, the butter cream will turn "inside out" and become beautiful and smooth like mayonnaise.
Beat in the coffee.

ASSEMBLING

confectioners' sugar
toasted sliced almonds

With a soup spoon, gently pour the syrup over the cakes in the pans.
Invert a platter on one of the cakes. Flip the cake, plus the platter plus the pan. Remove the pan. Peel the foil gently.

Butter this bottom layer with about a quarter of the butter cream.

With nerves of steel, invert the other cake over the buttered one.

Scrape the remaining butter cream on the top layer and frost the cake, starting with the sides.

Scatter almonds on the edge of the cake.

Dust the cake, almost all the way to the edge, with confectioners' sugar.

With a long thin knife, press a diamond pattern over the top of the cake.

Refrigerate at least one hour before serving.

Tips: If the butter cream refuses to thicken, refrigerate it a moment, and beat it again.
To toast almonds, place them in a 350F. oven for 15 to 20 minutes. Never broil almonds.