Coconut Cake with Passion Fruit
A light coconut sponge with an open, airy crumb, showered in desiccated coconut and drenched in sharp golden passion fruit.
- Total
- 1 hr 7 min
- Prep
- 25 min
- Bake
- 42 min
- Serves
- 10
- Level
- Medium
- Tin
- 20 cm springform
Coconut cake has a reputation for being dense and cloying, which comes from recipes that load the batter with creamed coconut and leave it at that.
This one goes the other way. The coconut is in the crumb as desiccated flakes and in the liquid as coconut milk, and the lift comes from egg whites folded in at the end, so the sponge is open and light. It needs to be, because it is about to get soaked.
Passion fruit is the whole reason for the cake. Sharp, floral and slightly grassy, poured over while the cake is still a little warm.
Ingredients
For the cake
For the passion fruit sauce
To finish
You will need
- 20 cm springform tin
- Electric whisk
- Sieve
Method
Oven 175°C · fan 155°C · 345°F
Heat the oven and line the tin
Heat the oven to 175°C / 155°C fan. Butter a 20 cm springform tin and line the base.
Cream the butter with most of the sugar
Beat the butter with 180 g of the sugar until pale, about 4 minutes. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time. Keep the whites in a clean, dry bowl.
Fold in the dry ingredients and coconut milk
Fold in the flour, desiccated coconut, baking powder and salt in three additions, alternating with the coconut milk and vanilla. Stop while a few streaks remain.
Whisk the whites and fold them through
Whisk the egg whites to soft peaks, then whisk in the last 40 g of sugar until glossy. Stir a third into the batter to slacken it, then fold in the rest in two goes, cutting down and sweeping up.
Tip This is what makes the crumb open and full of small holes rather than tight. Do not beat the whites past soft-glossy or they turn grainy and refuse to fold.
Bake for 42 minutes
Bake for 40–45 minutes until golden and springy, and a skewer comes out clean.
Make the passion fruit sauce
Scoop the pulp from all eight passion fruit. Push half of it through a sieve to get seedless juice, and keep the other half with its seeds. Warm both with the sugar and orange juice for 3 minutes, no longer, because you want it fresh and sharp, not jammy.
Release and coat
Cool 20 minutes in the tin, unclip the ring, and let it cool on the base. Press the extra desiccated coconut over the top while the cake is still faintly warm so it sticks.
Slice and pour
Cut thick wedges and spoon the passion fruit over each one at the table, seeds and all.
Baker's notes
- Ripe passion fruit are heavy for their size and deeply wrinkled. Smooth ones are not ready and taste of nothing.
- Out of season, 150 ml of good passion fruit purée from the freezer aisle works. Skip the sugar and taste first.
Keeping it 3 days at room temperature in a tin. The sponge dries faster than a butter-only cake, so cover the cut face with foil.
Questions, answered
Can I use coconut cream instead of coconut milk?
It is too rich and makes the crumb heavy. If it is all you have, thin it with water to the consistency of single cream.
My egg whites collapsed into the batter. What went wrong?
Either the batter was much stiffer than the whites, or they were over-whisked. Slackening the batter with a third of the whites first is the step that prevents it.
If it goes wrong
Three things account for most of what happens to a cake in a domestic oven. Each has its own guide.
- It sank in the middleSeven causes, told apart by the shape of the crater.
- It came out raw in the centreBrown outside, wet inside, and how to rescue the one you are holding.
- The caramel seizedIt is almost always fixable. The lump re-melts.
