Coconut Cake

Dairy-free

I was tidying my box of baking supplies when I noticed that I had three packs of desiccated coconut - must have been on special offer at some point. They were still within the 'best-before' date, but obviously something had to be done to reduce the coconut mountain before time did run out.

I decided make a plain coconut cake and to use coconut oil, to make it dairy-free. I could have added dried cherries, dried apricots or chocolate chips, all of which are good in combination with coconut, but sometimes something simple really fits the bill!

Ingredients
175g SR flour
40g desiccated coconut
80g coconut oil
80 - 100g caster sugar*
2 medium eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
water to mix

*(I used 80g, but thought the cake needed to be sweeter)

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 180C and line a 450ml (1lb) loaf tin, either with baking parchment, or a loaf tin liner.
Put the flour, coconut oil, desiccated coconut and sugar into a large bowl and use a fork to cut in the oil, until it is in very small pieces. (This recipe originally used butter and the rubbing-in method, but you can't really rub-in coconut oil by hand, although it should be OK if you're using a food processor).
Add the eggs and vanilla extract, and mix with a spoon until the batter is smooth, adding water as necessary to give a dropping consistency.
Transfer the batter to the baking tin, level the surface and bake in the centre of the oven for 60 minutes, or until a test probe comes out cleanly.