If you hadn't noticed, Mr B had a birthday. And in time honoured fashion, being married to a baker who loves to experiment with all kinds of cake, chose the same one he does every year. Coconut and vanilla. Ah well. It is a good'un. It's a slightly mongrelised recipe I have concocted over a few years, mainly inspired by the wonderous Nigella, but it produces a towering sugary sweet nutty wonder. I iced it with buttercream and piped with plain chocolate, but I think ganache would work beautifully as a filling / topping too.
Serves 10-12 (it is huge).
Grease and line 3 x 20cm / 8" sandwich tins (or 2 sandwich tins and a spare tin as I do!). Oven 170 fan.
Ingredients:
300g butter, softened
300g golden caster sugar
2 tsp actual vanilla extract with seeds and all
100g dessicated unsweetened coconut soaked in 225ml boiling water for about 10 mins
6 eggs
300g plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp cornflour
Method:
Cream butter and sugar together until it's really light and fluffy, then add the eggs until they're mixed in. It'll curdle. I don't care.
Mix in the vanilla, then dump the rest of the ingredients in together and beat it a bit until it's kind of smooth. It might still look curdly. I still don't care. Neither should you, trust me. By the way you add all the soaking water from the coconut too.
Divide it between the tins (not that I'm anal but I weigh it, about 500g each. Just over actually) and bake for 25 mins.
Then, to fill and ice, I made a whopping batch of vanilla buttercream (180g soft butter, 600g ish icing sugar, 50ml milk, 2 tsp vanilla schtuff with seeds, blitz like heck in a stand mixer with a cover on until light and dreamylicious) and spread over, under and around the cake. I then toasted some extra coconut and stuck it up the sides. With added glitter, obvs. It's a birthday cake. It needs glitter.
I'm sorry to your arteries. But your soul will thank me.
JB x
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