Recipe: Coconut Cake by James Martin

Recipe: Coconut Cake by James Martin

This coconutty cake looks stunning and sounds like it would be perfect for an Easter treat. Coconut always makes me think of spring, summer and sunshine!

Cooking Time: 20-25 minutes

Servings: 6-8

Ingredients

Cake

• 50g coconut cream
• 50g coconut oil
• 175g butter, softened
• 200g caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 175g plain flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 50g desiccated coconut

Buttercream

• 125g butter, softened
• 40g coconut cream
• 250g icing sugar, sifted
• 50g–75g coconut shavings
• 3–4 sprigs lemon verbena

Top Tip

For the filling and decoration, I would always use fresh coconut rather than dried, as the latter tends to dry out the buttercream, but you could toast the coconut shavings first, if you like.

Method

1) Preheat the oven to 180°C. Grease and line two 17cm deep-sided cake tins.

2) Gently heat the coconut cream and oil together in a small saucepan until liquid, then set aside to cool slightly.

3) Put the butter and caster sugar into a kitchen mixer or large bowl and beat until lightened and fluffy. Add the eggs, one by one. Add the vanilla extract then sift in the flour and baking power and fold together. Add the desiccated coconut, cooled coconut cream and oil and mix well, then divide between the prepared cake tins.

4) Smooth the tops over and bake for about 20–25 minutes until golden brown and risen. A skewer inserted into the centre should come out clean — if it doesn’t, return the cakes to the oven for another 5 minutes and repeat.

5) Cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes before turning out of the tins and cooling completely.

6) Meanwhile, make the buttercream. Beat the softened butter, coconut cream and icing sugar together in a food mixer or a bowl with an electric whisk until really light, fluffy and almost white in colour.

7) Spoon the icing into a piping bag fitted with a 13mm plain nozzle. Pipe swirls of coconut cream all over one sponge, then scatter some coconut shavings over the top, so that they stick out around the edge of the cake. Gently lay the second cake on top. Pipe small peaks of cream all over the top of the cake and finish with some more coconut shavings and small sprigs of lemon verbena.

As featured in James Martin’s Sweet. James Martin is one of the chefs who will be at the BBC Good Food Show Spring in Harrogate and the BBC Good Food Show Summer in Birmingham and London.