Lemon, Coconut and Cherry Loaf Cake

 - dairy-free!

Butter was on my shopping list; it's not my fault I forgot to pick it up - my husband distracted me by asking if we needed any cheese. By the time I'd explained, as I do every week, that if I needed something, it would be on my list, we had moved away from the butter shelf!

So, I would need to bake a cake with oil. As I also needed a cake to enter into this month's AlphaBakes challenge, which is the letter C, I decided to make a coconut cake, using both desiccated coconut and coconut oil. For added flavour, I decided to use a lemon that was languishing in the fridge, and some dried cherries which were near the 'best-before' date.

Ingredients
100g dried cherries, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons Kirsch (optional)
150g SR flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
75g desiccated coconut
200g caster sugar
160g coconut oil
zest of 1 lemon
3 large eggs
lemon juice, as required

Method
Soak the cherries in the Kirsch, if using, for a few hours beforehand, if you are organised enough. If you haven't got much time, or don't want to use alcohol,  soak the cherries in boiling water for a few minutes, then drain well.
Line a 900g (2lb) loaf tin with baking parchment and pre-heat oven to 180C.
Mix the flour, baking powder and desiccated coconut.
Beat the coconut oil, caster sugar and lemon zest until well blended.
Add the eggs one at a time, with a spoonful of the flour mixture, and beat in slowly.
Fold in the rest of the flour mixture, the cherries, and enough lemon juice to give a soft dropping consistency - I only needed a tablespoon of extra liquid.
Transfer the batter to the loaf tin, level the top and bake for about 60 minutes, until a test probe comes out dry and clean. If necessary, cover the cake after 30 minutes to prevent over-browning.
Cool in the tin for 20 minutes, then transfer the cake to a wire rack to finish cooling.

As the cake rose with a fairly flat top, I decided to turn it upside down and top with a lemon glacé icing made with a icing sugar and some of the leftover lemon juice.

You can see from the photos that the cherries sank to the bottom of the cake. To try to prevent this, I should have tossed them with a little of the measured flour. As I had turned the cake upside down to serve, this didn't look as bad as it could have done, but it was a stupid mistake to make! Fortunately it didn't affect the flavour, which was a good balance between the lemon, coconut and cherries. The texture was moist but a little heavy - I think it might have been better to beat the eggs and sugar together, then warm the oil slightly, to add it as a liquid.

AlphaBakes is a monthly challenge co-hosted by Caroline Makes and The More Than Occasional Baker. The idea is to bake something with a randomly chosen letter of the alphabet as the initial letter of either a major ingredient, or the name of the recipe. This month the host is Ros at TMTOB, and the letter chosen is C - in this case there's a double dose of Coconut and Cherries.

PS - this is my 600th blog post. How typical that it should be about something that wasn't entirely successful!