coconut cake

A soft, delicately sweet sponge cake with plenty of coconut flavour. Perfect for a sandwich cake with coconut buttercream and toasted coconut flakes, or served as is with a light sprinkling of icing sugar. Adding fresh or frozen berries to the batter is a lovely way to liven it up.

Makes one 8” round cake.

Dry ingredients:
300g self-raising flour
45g desiccated coconut
1/4tsp fine salt

Wet ingredients:
110g coconut oil, melted and cooled
3 medium eggs, room temperature
240g white sugar
1tsp vanilla essence (or 1/2tsp vanilla and 1/2tsp coconut essence)
190g (3/4 cup) full-fat milk (can be coconut or dairy, baker’s choice)

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Lightly grease an 8” round cake tin and line the bottom with baking paper.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.

In a separate large bowl, whisk together the oil, eggs, sugar and essence.

Add a third of the dry ingredients to the wet, mixing gently in big, sweeping stirs until just combined. Add half the milk and continue to mix. Add another third of the flour and repeat, followed by the rest of the milk. Finally, add the remaining flour, and gently stir until you have a thick, smooth batter.

Scrape your batter into the prepared tin, smooth the top with an offset or rubber spatula, and bake for 50 minutes to an hour.

Let the cake cool for 20 minutes in the tin before turning out onto a wire cooling rack. Once the cake is completely cool, decorate.