Coconut Cake

I absolutely love coconut, I love the smell, the texture and the taste but coconut cakes can often be disappointingly dry. It was my Nan's 80th birthday last September and she was having a big family party at my Mum's and I was tasked with making her birthday cake. Her favourite cake is lemon, which I did for the bottom tier but her favourite smell and taste, like me, is coconut. So I really wanted to make a coconut cake for the top tier but one that was moist and flavoursome. After trialling many I finally struck gold on a website called "Sally's Baking Addiction" and found a recipe for the most delicious coconut cake, one that is moist, light and fluffy but equally packed a punch with coconut flavour - mainly down to the fact that it has 3 types of coconut based ingredient in it! It is really easy to make and worked well with my light coconut buttercream icing. My Nan absolutely loved her cake and so many people commented on how much they loved the coconut layer. Makes two 7 inch sponges.

Ingredients

275g Plain Flour

170g Butter

330g Granulated Sugar

2tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda

1tsp Salt

240ml tinned Coconut Milk

5 Egg Whites

120g Sour Cream

2tsp Vanilla Extract

1tsp Coconut Extract

80g Desiccated Coconut

How To Make

1. Preheat the oven to 170'c and grease and base line two 7 inch cake tins. Sift together the flour, bicarb, baking powder and salt into a bowl. 

2. In your mixer beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then beat in the egg whites,vanilla, coconut extract and sour cream. At this point the mixture will look curdled but don't panic! 

3. Then on a low speed gradually add the dry mixture and then the coconut milk. Lastly fold in the desiccated coconut and mix until well combined. 

4. Split the batter between the two tins and bake for 20-25 minutes until risen, golden and a skewer comes out clean. Leave to rest in the tins for 5 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.

5. I decorated my Nan's cake with a coconut buttercream, using coconut extract for flavour and tinted it a lavender colour. I then topped the cake with a white chocolate drip and then, in line with the pastel "vintage tea party" colour theme of the decorations, I topped the cake with homemade mini meringues, party rings, marshmallows, pink fudge pieces and wafers daisies and butterflies.