Baking for Nightshift- Lemon Coconut Cake

OK so I know these photos look terrible especially as the cake it sitting on the base of my cake carrier ready to be taken to work. I quickly cut out a small slice of the cake before I left to photograph it but even that looks pretty average. However don't be fooled by these bad photos and whatever you do make this cake! The recipe is from Annabel Langbein's (who I won't, once again, wax lyrical about), new book 'Free Range in the City'.

I had limited time to bake something so this was my choice as it basically meant throwing some things into a food processor or mixer and that was it. The icing was a revelation. Coconut cream cheese frosting! Yum! Next time I think I would put in a bit more coconut essence as the cream cheese dulled the flavour a little. The recipe itself makes a huge cake so I halved it and got a good sized 23cm cake out of it. But baking it in it's entirety would be fantastic if you have a lot of people to feed. The cake itself had a lovely texture but was full of flavour. I always find it difficult to estimate the size of lemons to use. Recipes always say the juice and rind of 'x' amounts of lemons. What size?! Lemons come big and small so that only adds to the confusion. This time I only had fairly small lemons so I used the rind and juice of three which I think made it nice and lemony...but not too much. I'll give the recipe for the whole cake but feel free to halve it as I did.


Lemon Coconut Cake


3 c sugar
4 eggs
finely grated zest and juice of 4 lemons
2 c neutral oil (I used canola but you could also use grapeseed)
1 3/4 c plain unsweetened yoghurt
1/2 c desiccated coconut
4 c self raising flour
a pinch of salt


Coconut Icing
75 gm butter, softened not melted
250g cream cheese (not low fat)
1/2tsp coconut essence
4 c icing sugar
1/2 c desiccated coconut


Preheat the oven to 160C. Grease a 28-30cm springform tin and line wit baking paper.


Place sugar, eggs, lemon zest and juice, oil and yoghurt into a food processor or mixer and whizz to combine. Add coconut, flour and salt and pulse until just combined (don't overmix).


Bake about 1 1/2 hrs (my 23cm one with half the recipe took almost an hour), until cooked (check with a skewer into the middle or until it's springy). Cool in the tin.


To make the icing put all the ingredients into the food processor and whizz or beat until smooth. It may need to go into the fridge for a little bit to firm up before you use it.