Coconut, Lemon and Raspberry Cake

Do you love coconut, and lemon, and raspberry?  Yes indeed I do!  This is a Chelsea Winter cake, from her cookbook Everyday Delicious.  Chelsea is a Kiwi cook and writer; she won MasterChef New Zealand in 2012, and has gone on to write seven cookbooks.  And have a couple of children in the meantime (and several husbands).  Busy gal!

My most obvious change to her recipe is to use raspberries rather than passionfruit for the icing (which made it a pretty pinky-orange colour).  Not a massive fan of passionfruit myself.  Is it the texture, or the seeds?  Not sure.  But the raspberries make this cake very delicious.

Passionfruit does remind me of childhood though - everyone had a vine growing on their fence, and an Aussie (and Kiwi) pavlova ain't a pavlova without the fresh, bright-yellow, seedy stuff dripping over the top of the puffy meringue base.

pretty in pink :=)

Makes 1 large cake:

ingredients:

Cake:

130g./4.6 oz/1.5 cups desiccated coconut  see Notes

1 x 400 mL/13.5 oz can coconut milk

1.5 Tbs lemon juice

zest of 3 lemons

250g./9 oz butter, softened (not melted)

550g./19 oz/2.5 cups caster sugar   see Notes

4 large eggs, at room temp. (if you remember to take 'em out sooner)

1 tsp vanilla extract or paste

450g./16 oz/3 cups plain flour

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

fruity raspberry delicious!

Fruity Icing:

50g./1.8 oz butter

450g./16 oz/3 cups icing sugar   see Notes

2 punnets fresh raspberries (250g./9 oz), or the pulp of 10 passionfruit, or half a cup of passionfruit pulp in syrup

1-2 Tbs lemon juice

shaved coconut, to decorate

lemon        

Method:

On goes your oven to 170C/340F to heat up

Butter and flour the sides of a 24cm springform pan, and line the base with baking paper    see Notes

Grab yourself a medium bowl, into which you place the coconut, coconut milk, lemon juice and zest - give it a good stir, and let it mellow together for 10 minutes or so

In another bowl, you cream the butter and sugar together till thick and pale (this can take up to 5 minutes)

Now beat in the eggs, one at a time, then the vanilla

And now we're onto bowl number 3!  Sift together the flour, baking powder and baking soda in this bowl  

Whisk the flour mixture, and add it to the butter/sugar mixture - and don't forget to throw in the coconutty mixture too!

Now give it all a healthy stir - you know what I always say - firm but not too madly; just combine it nicely together

Pour/spoon the batter into your prepared cake pan, and give it a gentle tap/smoothing over

So now bake this cake in the lower part of your oven, for 85 minutes, or till your cake skewer comes out clean from its cakey heart

Don't forget to test it after 75 minutes, which is all mine took

Let it cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack

Yep, here comes the icing!:

Beat the butter and icing sugar together in a bowl, till light and fluffy, then stir in the fruit - I mixed one punnet of the raspberries in well, till I had a gorgeous pinky icing

You can add more butter or icing sugar, till you get the texture you like   see Notes 

Spoon/pour on the icing over your cooled cake, and throw on the shaved coconut, and the other punnet of raspberries (or passionfruit pulp)

coconutty!

Notes:

Not a massive fan of desiccated coconut; I often use shaved or even moist coconut flakes (but watch out for the sugar in those)

I only used 500g. caster sugar!

What is a cup of icing sugar?  Good question - anything from 125g. to 150g. it seems, so use a bit less if you wish, than the 450g.  I ended up adding an extra 50g. of icing sugar, as my icing was a bit runnier than I liked

Chelsea says you can use a 24cm up to a 27cm cake tin, but she doesn't mention different baking times, except to say watch out at 75 minutes - which I did!

(Righto, here's my wee bit of unsolicited advice for all you bakers out there - buy yourself a metal cake skewer!  Toothpicks were never invented for testing cakes, and think of the trees!!  IYKYK ...)

ingredients gathered

putting together the coconutty mixture

mixing the batter

ready for the oven at 170C/340F

now let it cool right down

start on your icing now

and beat it up - but nicely :=)

such a picture!  a pinky delight

one guess!  yep, a Kiwi

Oh, and please take heed, folks - a kiwi is a bird, or a person from New Zealand.  Remember to add the word 'fruit' to the end when you're about to decorate your pavlova; otherwise we think you're going to chop up this fella, and throw him/her on your cake!

(Photo from the Auckland War Memorial Museum collection.)