Baking for Nightshift- Lemon Syrup and Coconut Cake

I found this recipe in a long forgotten about Sophie Grey book the other day. When it came to deciding what to take to work tonight I remembered I had seen it and abandoned my thoughts of making a lemon slice (I know I'm all about lemons at the moment!), and went straight to this. Actually I think having had a slice of my boss Mariam's delicious Lime, Coconut and Passionfruit cake the other morning as I was finishing my shift, reminded me how good the combination of citrus and coconut is, so I was inspired to try this recipe. This was very easy and the method different to how I would normally make a cake. I wondered if it would work given that the method is so different from what I would think would make a good cake, but it actually tastes lovely. I added a lemon drizzle icing and some coconut flakes to emphasise the coconut in the cake (Mariam had some on her cake and it looked really lovely so sorry Mariam...another idea nicked!). I also made it in my lovely Bundt loaf tin and while the recipe calls for a 20cm tin I think it would be better off in a 23cm tin. 

Lemon Syrup and Coconut Cake


350 g flour
3/4 c sugar
pinch of salt
100 g coconut
3 tsp baking powder
200 g butter
 zest and juice of 2 lemons
2 eggs
300 ml milk


Grease and line the base of a 20 or 23 cm tin (or else prepare a bundt tin) and preheat the oven to 180 C.


Put the flour, salt, baking powder, coconut and sugar into a food processor and pulse to mix. Add in the cubed butter and process so it looks like breadcrumbs (or you can rub in the butter with your fingertips).


Tip into a large bowl, make a well in the middle and add in the lemon juice, zest, eggs and milk and mix together. It needs to be a soft dropping consistency.


Pour into the tin and bake 40-50 mins.


Turn out of the tin after about 15 mins and brush over a syrup made with 1/4 c sugar, 1/4 c lemon juice and a splash of water. Heat the syrup ingredients until the sugar is dissolved. 


I drizzled mine with a runny icing made with icing sugar and lemon juice to get the right consistency and sprinkled it with some coconut flakes.