Travels for Taste

Tales of travel and food with a touch of spice

Chocolate Coconut Cake with Coconut flavoured Icing

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Decadent Chocolate cake with a delicious coconut flavoured icing

Dreaming of a chocolate cake, baking it, and devouring it, is a common obsession of mine. Also, I had many excuses to bake chocolatey treats, what with Valentine’s just around the corner. Not to mention many other reasons to eat cake following in quick succession after Valentines – my dad and husband’s birthday and our wedding anniversary, woohoo!

With so many occasions all lined up one after the other, a mega celebration was in order. And as we all know any celebration, big or small is incomplete without, yes you guessed right a proper cake.

So my plan was to bake an indulgent and rich chocolate cake and how better than Nigella to look to for a good recipe! Unable to pick a recipe on my own, I asked my neighbour’s adorable 5-year daughter to flip through Nigella Lawson’s book ”Feast” – Food That Celebrates Life. Lucky for me she stopped flipping pages at Nigella’s Old Fashioned Chocolate cake recipe. Better still it is made using only the food processor – so very perfect.

Besides, no better way to bring in Valentine’s week than by baking a decadent chocolate cake with hints of coconut flavour and adding some coconut flavoured icing on the top. I love Nigella’s original recipe which I have (dared to!) modify as I had been thinking of ways to use the lovely samples sent to me by Sugar and Crumbs.

I have modified the original recipe by using three medium-sized regular eggs, thick yogurt instead of sour cream, and have reduced the quantity of ingredients for the icing because I am not a big fan of slathering a very thick layer of sugary icing in between the layers nor am I very fond of a huge layer of icing on the top but I guess even after reducing the quantities of ingredients for the icing I still managed to get lots to smother the cake with. I have used Sugar and Crumbs flavoured cocoa powder in Chocolate Coconut and Sugar and Crumbs flavored natural icing sugar in coconut flavour, result – a perfectly balanced taste of coconut without being overpowering. So am calling my cake – ”Chocolate Coconut Cake with Coconut flavoured Icing”.For the remaining part, the original recipe is perfect, basic, simple, and therefore beautiful as it is foolproof and even a novice can get an excellent delicious, fluffy, and intensely chocolatey cake – very satisfying indeed! Thank You, Nigella!

Chocolate Coconut Cake with Coconut flavoured Icing

Chocolate Coconut Cake

Easy and delicious Chocolate cake recipe
Print Recipe
Prep Time 25 minutes
Cook Time 25 minutes
Course Dessert
Servings 8 portions

Equipment

  • Two 8 inch Round cake tins
  • Food Processor or stand-mixer
  • Spatula
  • Measuring spoons
  • Cake tester or thin skewer

Ingredients
  

  • 200 grams plain flour
  • 200 grams caster sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 40 grams Sugar and Crumbs flavoured cocoa powder in Chocolate Coconut
  • ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
  • 175 grams soft unsalted butter
  • 3 medium-sized eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 150 ml thick-set yogurt

Instructions
 

  • Sift the plain flour through a sieve into a large mixing bowl
  • Add the caster sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and bicarbonate of soda
  • Mix well with a spatula and transfer it into the food processor
  • Crack the eggs into the mixture, add the vanilla essence and the yogurt and mix roughly with a spatula before running the food processor to ensure that the loose flour doesn’t fly all over the place. For the first 30 seconds, I lightly covered the chute of the processor with my palm to prevent the flour from flying out in a mist. Now, this is the reason I want a Kitchen Aid 😉
  • After an initial spin, use the blunt edge of the knife to scoop out what stuck to the walls of the processor and mix well with the cake batter.
  • Don’t worry if you think the batter is very thick, another spin for about a minute should give you the required consistency to ”pour” into the cake tins
  • Grease two removable base 8-inch tins with butter and equally divide the cake batter into each tin
  • Preheat the oven to gas mark 4/180°C/350ºF
  • Bake for 25 minutes and then test the center of the cake with a cake tester or thin skewer
  • My cakes were done in 25 minutes but you may need up to 30 minutes depending on the type of oven. The cakes rose beautifully but the top had cracks. The icing was there to save the day and make the cake look pretty
  • Remove cakes from the baking tray and leave to cool down on a wire rack

Coconut flavoured Icing

Print Recipe

Ingredients
  

  • 50 grams unsalted butter
  • 125 grams best quality dark chocolate broken into small pieces
  • 225 grams icing sugar
  • 100 ml sour cream
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions
 

  • While the cakes are in the oven prepare the icing by mixing together all the ingredients of the icing
  • The original recipe calls for adding golden syrup but I totally gave that a miss
  • Why? Because I had already borrowed some butter, some yogurt, baking powder, and bicarbonate of soda from my very patient neighbour H 😉 – yes, yes she did get a large portion of this cake 🙂
  • Now to ice the cakes place the slightly domed part of one cake face down and slather icing on the flat part and place the other cake flat side down on the icing and then slather icing all over the cake
  • I had some pretty pink and white sugar stars which I used to decorate my cake.

I have also been sent Sugar and Crumbs Coffee Flavoured icing sugar and a pack of salted caramel powder, maybe cupcakes need to be baked next ?:)

Need more recipe inspiration to get baking?

Why not check out my other recipes here:

Linking this post to the  We should Cocoa event hosted by Choclette who blogs at Choc Log Blog where the challenge is to use an ingredient and that ingredient is chocolate – how apt for Valentines, and with all that gorgeous dark chocolate this cake certainly qualifies!

My blog post is being linked to Dom’s Random Recipes event hosted by Dom who blogs at Belleau Kitchen, where for February the challenge is to select any chocolate-themed recipe book and to make a randomly selected recipe from that book. The idea of this recipe challenge is to make us home chefs step outside our comfort zones and make something that we would otherwise hesitate to and totally avoid. Humm okay, I got off easy this time 🙂

Also for the first time. I’m joining in with Jibber Jabber’s Love Cake first-ever event where the theme for the month of love is Baking with Passion and is a cake-baking challenge.

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Disclaimer: With many thanks to Sugar and Crumbs for the generous amount of samples to test and review.I was not required to write a positive review and was not compensated monetarily for this post. Like all my previous posts about events and reviews, ALL opinions expressed here are entirely my own.

Memory Palace ….

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Thomas Harris has described this bit about his character Dr. Hannibal Lecter very vividly in his book. Of how he has many ”rooms” in the ”palace of his mind” where he has stored very colour full memories associated with various stages of his young and happy childhood , until war , disaster and finally the tragedy struck which turned him into the dangerously intelligent doctor with a taste for human flesh.

It may sound odd to draw an anaology from this biut somehow the memory palace started taking birth deep inside my head .

Many a times when I am reading a book , watching a film or simply taking a walk, if something or someone reminds me  of a special memory from my life . I walk back in time and relive it , in all it’s glory , am sure at times I even imagine and add to that memory , just to amuse myself . Make a happy memory happier , a scary one less frightening.

God alone knows how many such ”rooms” we all have in our personal palace of memories stored inside the least understood but most mystifying part of us – our minds….

The Day the internet failed……

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I wrote this piece on Monday evening ,the internet went up after a few hours ,after I wrote this , spent all of yesterday doing god knows what , so here I am updating my blog with stuff I should have uploaded long back …guilt guilt … sighh:)

It’ s been a very wet day , I woke up at half past 11 , quite late for a Monday morning for most of the world , including my hubby , but well ,probably acceptable for a retailer like me for whom a weekday becomes her Sunday . I would have typed 11:30 but the habit of saying half past so and so has finally seeped into my head thank to all the people around here at work in London , just another small, subtle but noticeable change at how one’s surroundings make us change our long learnt habits .

I do feel like stepping out and just talking a walk but my back has been sore for a few days and yes the weather isn’t helping at all in pushing me to step out , maybe if I treat myself to a new pair of wellis in a bright and cheerful pop colour it may help.

I just saw a movie ‘’Sabrina’’ on T.V as I tried many times unsuccessfully to get my internet up and running , I started cooking too , now am brewing some hot ginger tea and am frying some spicy , hot dal vadas (fried crunchy finger food made from ground dals) , waiting for hubby to get home .

I know that by the type I upload this to my blog, the whole moment will have passed away but just wanted to write about it.

I am at home alone , it’s still a bit bright outside , there is a slight drizzle, a lonely person is trying hard to stay warm in a thin flimsy wind cheater on the bus stop opposite our building gate .I feel grateful for being indoors, having a warm place to stay , food to eat , a husband that loves me to bits and pampers me rotten , a laptop on which I can type this piece onto and a fairly decent life with very few things to crib about ,of course it isn’t perfect , but then isn’t perfection another illusion, shall I just say that I am happy with my life for now , it does suffice for now, certainly does .

I have a book next to me that I want to read , I will after I write this and sip my tea as I wait for my husband to get back from work.

I know what’s for dinner, a spicy traditional fish curry with steamed rice, comfort food for the soul.(The fish of choice is Bombay Duck – or as we call it in Marathi my mother tongue – ”gatgate” or ”Bombil”)

I don’t want to call anyone though am missing home back in India real bad since morning. I am sedate in a way but totally restless in some far corner of my mind.

I am not sure what the reason for that restlessness is, but then if we always knew all the answers for what we feel and why, life wouldn’t be what it is, would it?

I have no idea if anyone will read this and if they do what would they think about it? Spot a few grammatical errors perhaps or maybe incorrect sentence construction. Some might even think, ‘’what garbage, just because blogging is free, everyone who can type thinks they can write’’ Partly true perhaps as well I guess…

Anyway , I am not writing for anybody , it’s more of a release, a diary of sorts , a catharsis even , who knows …just that I want to write this for now …

Aaah the husband’s back, now to get cracking on preparing dinner, catching up on how we spent our day and other daily stuff that life is made up of…..

Bye bye or as the babes in the new Fosters telly ad say ‘’Toodles’’ ….

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