Orange Coconut Cake

This is just a short post to give the orange coconut cake recipe. I'm really busy today and need to go to work early. We're in the midst of our Christmas preparations and there is so much to do! We also have a BBQ lunch with our Flexischool students so the hour I have for that I'll replace with going in an hour early.

I was interested to read Laurie from Amish Country's comment about her relatives coming to Australia in their winter. At the moment, I'm working with a Canadian man who comes to Australia every winter. While he's here, he does voluntary work and this year he is with us. It must be quite a change for him but he's fitting in well and is a pleasure to work with.

And so, the cake. Many of you know that I don't follow recipes, I use them as a starting guide. I have tweaked this recipe quite a bit and now it's a flavour-packed moist orange cake that every one loves. It's the addition of the coconut cream that makes the difference. If you've only made cakes from a box before, this is a good recipe to add to your cook from scratch recipes. It's easy and, apart from pre-soaking the coconut, fairly quick.

Ingredients

• ¾ cup caster sugar
• 125 grams butter (¼ lb), room temp
  
• 3 teaspoons finely grated orange rind
• 3 eggs, room temp
• 1 cup coconut cream - you can buy this at Aldi, most supermarkets or any Asian store
  
• 1 ½ cups self-raising flour, sifted OR 1 ½ cups plain (all purpose) flour with 3 teaspoons of baking powder added
  
• 1 ½ cups desiccated (shredded unsweetened) coconut
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed orange juice

Method

1. Place the coconut, the orange juice and the coconut cream in a bowl and let it sit for an hour.
   
2. Preheat oven to 160°C.
   
3. Place sugar, butter and orange rind in a large bowl, and beat until light and creamy, this will take about 4 or 5 minutes.
   
4. Add eggs one at a time, beating well between each one.
5. Fold flour and coconut mixture into the butter mix. When it's combined, place it in a round greased and lined cake pan.
   
6. Cook for 50 minutes or until , when tested with a skewer, it comes out clean.

When it's cold, sprinkle with icing sugar (confectioner's sugar) or you could make the same icing I made.

Pour the juice of a fresh orange into a small saucepan and put on the stove. Allow to come to the boil and let it simmer. Don't walk away because OJ has a lot of sugar and it will burn. Allow it to reduce to half its volume, then take it off the heat, add a teaspoon of butter and let it cool. When it's cool, add enough icing sugar to make a frosting the consistency you would like and pour it over the cake.

OR - this is much simpler: add the juice of an orange to 1 cup of icing sugar and pour that over the cake.

See you tomorrow!