Raspberry Coconut Cake

This week I’ve been working on lots and lots of cake recipes using sweetened coconut flakes. So far, two have been successful. The first: raspberry coconut. It’s mad tasty, I promise. One thing of note with this recipe: the batter won’t rise very much, so you should fill your pan or cupcake liners at least 3/4 full when baking! Also, please excuse the fact that I was silly and took the cupcakes out of the liners…which made them look less-than-perfect in the pictures ha ha.

Raspberry Coconut Cake or Cupcakes

Makes 16 cupcakes or just over enough batter for one 9″ round cake pan. Double the recipe if you’d like a full-sized cake. (Remember: It’s okay to have extra batter! It’s better to freeze the extra than to add more batter than you should in the cake pan.)

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, cut into pieces
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup coconut milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 (heaping) cup sweetened coconut flakes
1 cup of finely chopped raspberries

Method

Firstly, in case you haven’t, you should check out my basic cake baking method and my list of cake baking tips! Every cake batter recipe I post follows that same method, and my cake baking tips are great tips to memorize for whenever you’re preparing a cake batter such as this.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

In a medium-sized bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

In a larger bowl, beat the butter at a high speed, and gradually beat in the sugar. Then, slowly beat in the egg whites.

Now you will gradually be adding the dry mixture and the coconut milk to the butter-sugar-egg mixture. To do this, alternate mixing in some of the dry mixture, followed by some milk, followed by some dry mixture… You get the picture. Do that until you’ve incorporated the dry mixture and the coconut milk completely. Just don’t over-mix here.

Finish by incorporating the vanilla, coconut flakes, and raspberries.

If you’re making cupcakes, pour the batter into greased or lined cupcake wells (pour more than you usually would since they won’t rise as much) and bake for 16 to 22 minutes. If you’re baking a cake, pour the batter into a greased 9″ round cake pan and bake for 30 to 40 minutes. Rely on the toothpick test here for a perfect cooking time—a toothpick inserted into the middle should come out with some crumbs on it.