Coconut Cake

I am a keen baker – I love to spend a Saturday afternoon in the kitchen, up to my elbows in recipes books and cake tins.  Often I am inspired by a recipe someone from the office has shared, or a new cookbook purchase; this cake was inspired by a bag of gorgeous coconut chips that made it into my trolley on my last trip to the supermarket.  The end result of an afternoon’s work was a moist, fluffy and rather beautiful coconut cake, drenched in syrup and slathered with cream cheese icing.  There was nothing but a few lonely crumbs left by Sunday night – this is one moreish cake!

Ingredients

• Cake
• 150g butter, softened
• 1 ¼ cups brown sugar (firmly packed)
• Finley grated zest of 1 orange
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups coconut thread
• 1 cup milk
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder

• Syrup
• ½ cup sugar
• ¼ cup lemon juice
• ½ cup water

• Cream Cheese Icing
• 50g butter, softened
• 300g icing sugar
• 125g cream cheese
• Zest and juice 1 lemon

• --
• 50g coconut chips, to decorate

Method

• Cake
• 1. Preheat oven to 160ºC on Bake, grease and line a 20cm springform tin.
• 2. In a stand mixer cream butter, brown sugar, orange zest and vanilla until very pale and fluffy.
• 3. Meanwhile soak the coconut thread in the milk.
• 4. Add the eggs one at a time to the creamed butter and sugar, beating well after each addition.
• 5. Fold through the soaked coconut thread and milk.
• 6. Sift flour and baking powder together and fold through batter.
• 7. Pour into tin and bake for 50-60 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean.
• 8. Pour hot syrup over hot cake while still in tin. Set aside to cool before removing from tin.
• 9. Ice with cream cheese icing and top with coconut chips.

• Syrup
• Put all ingredients into a small saucepan and boil for 5-10 minutes until syrupy.

• Cream cheese icing
• In a stand mixer, combine butter and icing sugar until the texture resembles course sand. Add cream cheese, lemon juice and zest. Beat until thick and creamy