Coconut Cake

Last night we had a dessert and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang party in Andersons Bay. Perfect occasion for cake. We ditched our student scum for a real persons house - some friends are cat sitting for the summer and she has a projector! She also has an amazing collection of kitsch homewares. I made a wee collection for the photo. Easily the silliest photo to date. Look at those teapots.

Man Chitty Chitty Bang Bang rules. Everytime today when I mentioned to someone that I watched it last night, invariably their response was "Shit that film is long". Very true. But it rules so much.

Coconut cake was really yum. Buttery and cocoutty, as one would expect. Once again, it was made with help from Nigella. I read this week that her Dad is called Nigel. Awesome. This cake is not actually dissimilar from the Victoria Sponge. In fact, its practically identical except for the coconut and assembly.

225g unsalted butter

225g caster sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

4 large eggs

200g self raising flour

25g cornflour

50g dessicated coconut soaked in 150mls boiling water

Preheat oven to 180degreesC. Cream butter and sugar. Add vanilla. Add eggs one at a time with a spoon of flour in between. Fold in remaining flour and cornflour. Add soaked coconut. Put mixture into two 20cm tins. Bake for 25 mins or until golden brown.

For sandwich icing: 

25g dessicated coconut

75g unsalted butter

150g icing sugar

1 Tbsp Malibu (I used coconut essence because I was too poor to fork out $40 for a bottle of Malibu)

Nigella toasted the coconut in a frying pan first and lets it cool and then adds it to the creamed butter and sugar and essence. I, however, was feeling a bit lazy and in a wee bit of a rush so I didn't bother and just mixed it all together. It worked fine and tasted good too. Up to you. It makes a perfect amount for sandwhiching the cakes together.

For the icing:

Nigella uses royal icing in her recipe, but screw that shit. Too hard. And expensy. So I just played with coconut essence, icing sugar, a touch of lemon juice and boiling water until I had a white icing that was the right consistency to paste all over the cake. Then, just for decoration, I sprinkled a wee bit of dessicated coconut on top. 

Safe to say the cake was more popular than the film. But screw you all. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is before the age of ipods and facebook and was not intended for our generation - with easily the shortest attention spans in history.  Have some appreciation people! And holy shit that child-catcher is freaky. That is all.