Sticky coconut sponge

Wherever I look lately in blog-land I see delicious coconut cakes! Coconut is very high on my list of all time favourite cake ingredients so when I saw this recipe in Leila Lindholm’s “A piece of cake”, I knew I had to make it.


When I started baking this my heart sunk as I noticed that the sponge recipe was the ‘whipped egg and very little butter method’. I have tried and failed consistently with such recipes in the past but decided to carry on, and I’m glad I did because this recipe produced a gorgeous sponge.


The one thing I would do differently next time is bake the sponge a little longer before adding the topping. My sponge was not fully firm and sank a smidgen when I added the topping – you’ll also notice that some sponge rebelled and broke through the topping giving me a cake that looks like a monk’s hairdo (I think it’s called a tonsor but don’t quote me on that - I accept no responsibility for any non-cake facts included in my posts):


The syrupy topping sinks into the cake in a way similar to a steamed golden syrup pudding – I think these photos show it well:



Ingredients:
For the cake:
225g caster sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons Vanilla extract
50g unsalted butter
100ml milk
210g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder

For the coconut topping:
25g unsalted butter, at room temperature
50ml golden syrup
75ml single cream
90g desiccated coconut
90g caster sugar

How to make:

- Preheat the oven to 180°C/fan oven 160°C/350°F/Gas mark 4.
- Line the base of a 20cm round springform tin with a disc of baking paper.
- Whisk together the eggs, sugar and vanilla until airy and fluffy.
- Melt the butter and whisk into the eggs along with the milk.
- Fold in the flour and baking powder. This is where I have often hit a problem with this method as the flour doesn’t seem to mix into the egg. So this time, I whisked the flour in very gently and only until just combined. I found it worked much better.
- Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 25 minutes. My cake was still soft at this point and, next time I would bake for 30-35 minutes.
- While the cake is cooking, make the topping. You want the topping to be soft so start making it when the cake has about 10 minutes to go.
- Place all the topping ingredients into a saucepan and stir over a medium heat until melted and nicely combined.
- Bring to the boil and let boil for 5 minutes until the mixture has turned a caramel brown.
- Remove the cake from the oven and pour the topping over it – spread out so all the cake has some topping.
- Return to the oven and bake for a further 15 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Mine took 25 minutes.
- Leave to cool in the tin before turning out.
- Bask in glory at the wonderful thing you have made.
- Eat.