Pineapple and coconut cake

When Lindt contacted me regarding their new Hello Summer fruity chocolate range I zeroed straight in on the luscious looking white chocolate, pineapple and coconut bar. 

It didn’t disappoint and is a great chocolate bar to soften the blow of Autumn and Winter arriving so suddenly this year.  The berry, lime and strawberry versions are a bit of alright too, and Mr CC made very appreciative sounds over the coffee version.  (My toughest challenge on this one was holding him back long enough to photograph all the chocolate!)

As luck would have it, I had bookmarked the recipe for this cake from Laws of the Kitchen, one of my favourite bloggers. You should visit her site anyway, but especially if you want to find this recipe in cups.

I decided to add a pineapple glaze to the cake and scatter finely chopped Lindt chocolate over the top.  It worked well as the filling was firm enough to hold its shape when I cut it into fine shards.  The bar is shaped nicely – I always think long thin bars taste better than squarer ones!

The one mistake I made was forgetting to buy buttermilk.  My local shop doesn’t stock it and I couldn’t face a trip to the supermarket just for one ingredient.  So I did what I always do in a crisis...I turned to the internet!  I never realised how easy it is to make buttermilk – simply milk and lemon juice.  I liked that I could make the quantity I needed; normally when I buy a pot of buttermilk for a recipe I end up wasting some of it.  It wasn’t quite as thick as the shop bought version but did the same job.  In this photo you can see the curdling start to take place:

Thank you Lindt for the lovely samples...any time you need someone to taste your chocolate I will make the time to assist!!!

Ingredients

For the cake:

250g unsalted butter, at room temperature
300g caster sugar
5 eggs
375g plain flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
180ml coconut milk
120ml buttermilk (or make your own with 120ml milk and 1 tablespoon lemon juice)
100g desiccated coconut
230g crushed pineapple – save the juice for the icing (I could only get pineapple chunks so mashed them up a bit with a fork)

For the icing:

100g icing sugar
1 tablespoon pineapple juice (from the can!)

To decorate: Lindt coconut and pineapple chocolate

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/gas mark 4.

If you are making your own buttermilk mix together the milk and lemon juice and leave to stand for at least 10 minutes.  It will start to curdle but won’t become quite as thick as the shop bought version.

Line a 20cm square cake pan with baking paper.

Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Beat in the eggs one at a time – if the mixture starts to curdle add some of the flour.  Having said that, I didn’t find the mixture curdled – beat the butter and sugar for a long time and you should be ok.

Stir together the coconut milk and buttermilk.

Stir in 1/3 of the flour followed by half the buttermilk and coconut milk.

Repeat with a further 1/3 of flour and the remaining buttermilk and coconut milk.

Stir in the remaining flour and the baking powder.

Stir in the pineapple and coconut.

Spoon into the prepared cake tin and level the surface.

Bake for approximately 1hour – 1 hour 15 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Leave to cool for 30 minutes in the tin before de-tinning and leaving to cool completely on a wire rack.

Now make the icing – beat together the ingredients until thick and glossy.

Drizzle over the cake.

Sprinkle over shards of lovely Lindt chocolate.

Bask in the glory of the wonderful thing you have created.

Eat.