Speckled Malted Coconut Cake

I am in love with coconut at the moment! It all started with Connoisseur’s new Sumatran Coconut ice cream, and now I’ve found myself drawn to every recipe I stumble across that features coconut.

I stumbled across this recipe on the Country Living website, and was intrigued by the flavour of the malt combined with the coconut- it’s absolutely divine, FYI.  This gorgeous Robin’s Egg colour of the icing and the speckled decoration makes this sweet treat perfect for Easter, girly morning teas, or anyone with a sugar craving.

Speckled Malted Coconut Cake

Cake

Baking spray for pan

3 cups of plain flour, levelled

1 1/2  tsp baking powder

1/4 cup malted milk powder

1 tsp kosher salt

1 cup canola oil

1 cup half-and-half (or 1/2 cup cream + 1/2 cup whole milk)

1 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp coconut extract

1 large egg

2 large egg whites

1 tsp brown food colouring

1/2 packet moist coconut flakes, lightly toasted

Icing

1 cup unsalted butter

1/2 cup coconut cream

6 cups icing sugar

Pinch of kosher salt

6 drops of blue food colouring

• Preheat oven to 180ºC. Lightly grease 3 x 20cm cake pans. Whisk together flour, baking powder, malt powder and salt in a bowl.
• In another bowl, whisk together oil, half-in-half, sugar, vanilla, coconut extract and whole egg until just smooth. Fold in flour mixture until just incorporated. Beat egg whites with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form. Very carefully fold egg whites into the batter until just combined.
• Divide among prepared pans. Bake for 18-22 minutes. My oven is usually slow, so I baked mine for 24 minutes. I found my cakes to be slightly dry, so in future I’d definitely opt for the lower cooking time. Cool pans on a wire rack, and then invert cakes onto the racks to cool completely.
• To make the icing, beat butter and coconut cream together in a bowl. Because I am such a fan of coconut, the next time I make this I’m going to decrease the amount of butter and increase the coconut cream, as the end flavour wasn’t quite as strong as I was hoping. Beat in salt and icing sugar, a cup at a time until smooth and well combined. I know this seems like a lot of sugar, but you need this icing stiff to hold the layers of cake together.
• Add your food colouring, a few drops at a time, until your icing is a lovely Robin’s Egg Blue colour. I actually used teal food colouring from Spotlight, but I’m sure plain blue would be just as pretty.
• Place one layer of your cake on a cake plate and ice with coconut buttercream. Repeat with remaining cakes, and then frost the sides with remaining buttercream. I had plenty of icing left over, and probably could have used even less.
• To decorate, combine the brown food colouring in a bowl with a few drops of water. Use a wide, very stiff paintbrush to dip into the mixture, and then gently fling the mixture onto the iced cake. Spread the toasted coconut around the base of the cake.

Heidi xx