Inside Out Bounty Cake

One of my favourite flavours is coconut and you may have seen on this blog a few weeks back, that I blogged a favourite recipe of mine for coconut cake. Around the same time, I also blogged the recipe for my friend Helen's chocolate cake which I have discovered is both easy and impressive.

I was thinking about cakes - as you do - and I remembered that a favourite dessert I once had on a holiday was coconut ice-cream with a warmish chocolate sauce. And then I thought of Bounty bars - coconut in the middle, chocolate on the outside. It got me thinking - maybe I could make a chocolate coconut cake. So, I set off on a Google search, the results of which were disappointing. Half the recipes stipulated cake mix as an ingredient and I have to be honest, I really don't see the point when I have the basic ingredients to hand.

I therefore set about devising my own cake using both of the above recipes. What I decided on was to have the chocolate cake in the middle, with the addition of some coconut to give it a bit of flavour, and coconut frosting on the outside, kind of like a Bounty inside out, so that's why I've called it Inside Out Bounty Cake! I've never devised my own recipe like this before, so it was fairly ground-breaking for me. I am good at following recipes, not creating them out of nothing.

I set off on this journey on Wednesday after the children went to bed. Unfortunately, after I'd baked the cake, I discovered I had no icing sugar so had to make the icing the next day as I was home alone with the kids and couldn't go to the supermarket. I was a bit dubious at first because I ended up with extra icing with my first piece and it seemed a bit sickly but it has been universally wolfed down and praised by those who have tried it. You only need a small slice so in theory, it lasts ages - unless you have kids who love coconut. Mine do!

Inside Out Bounty Cake

Ingredients
For the cake:
275g/10oz caster sugar
175g/6oz soft tub margarine
3 eggs
175g/6oz natural yogurt
1 tsp vanilla essence
3 tbsp coconut cream (try to use the thick part if it's separated a bit)
200g/7oz self raising flour
50g/2oz cocoa powder
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
50g/2oz desiccated coconut

For the icing:
100g/4oz butter, at room temp or slightly softened
300g/10oz icing sugar
4tbsp coconut cream or to taste (NOT creamed coconut - I buy the cream from Waitrose or Booths)

1. Pre-heat oven to 180^oC/350^oF/gas 4. Grease a 32cm (9in) spring form cake tin. Line the base with non-stick baking paper. Dust the inside of the tin with a little flour, then tap out the excess. (An 8in tin will also work although you may need to adjust cooking time.)

2. Beat the caster sugar and margarine in a mixing bowl until smooth (I use an electric mixer). Beat in eggs, vanilla essence, yoghurt and coconut cream. Sift in flour, cocoa and bicarbonate of soda, tip in the desiccated coconut.  Stir until fully combined. Spoon mixture into prepared tin and level the surface.

3. Bake cake for 45-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Put the tin onto a wire rack, and cool for 5 minutes. Turn the cake out onto rack to cool completely.

4. Make the icing once the cake is completely cool. Mix the butter and icing sugar together and stir in the coconut cream. Beat until smooth. You may need to add a little more icing sugar or coconut cream to get a nice spreading consistency. Swirl over the top and sides of the cooled cake.




As you can see, I made the icing a teensy bit runny but it did make it soft and nice to eat. There is only one piece of the cake left now but then I took a big chunk of it round to my friend's today. There were 7 children and 3 mummies - most of the kids had at least one piece, if not more!

What do you think to my experiment then? Leave me a comment if you try the recipe. Happy baking!

(This is an entry to English Mum's Big July Bake Off, for which the prize is a Green & Black's hamper. Entry details are on the post but entries close today - that's 31st July - so if you want to enter, get baking and snapping pretty quick!)