TWD: Coconut Tea Cake

After many, many weeks, Lenten season has come to an end and so here comes an almost-in-time "Tuesdays with Dorie"-post! (Actually, this tea cake was due last week, but we were allowed to switch weeks.)

I had a coconut in my bio-basket the other week, so I decided to use it. Mary of Mary Mary Culinary gave me some hints how to transfer it into something I could bake with. And she was caring enough to take the time to have a look how it turned out. Thanks so much! (Btw.: What a great blog name! Is it just me or are there also other people who love blogs just for their name? Don't get me wrong - Mary's blog is also a delight for her pictures and all the wonderful stuff she creates in the kitchen. But I like words (does this sound odd?) and playing with language. So this is one of my absolute favourite TWD-blogs!)


I am not 100% convinced that that's what the shredded, toasted coconut should look like. Turning from white to brown just went in a second, so I missed the point when I should have taken them out. But they still didn't taste bad, so I used them nevertheless.

I opted for including some lime juice. The bio farmers at the market didn't have lime or lemons so I only used the juice from a store-bought, don't-use-the-zest-lime. I decided to take a bit more, to guarantee for the taste, because other bloggers wrote about a not very strong taste. And I decided to frost the cake with some white lime chocolate. I also opted for the rum, took a bit less sugar, and included a bit more of the shredded coconuts, not at least because my batter seemed to be very, very liquid. The recipe calls for 3/4 cups, and although I made only half the batter, I used the whole amount of coconut.
I made a small bundt and six minis. It would not have mattered to have a bit more batter, but it was ok like that, too.


The minis took about 15 mins, the small bundt about 7 mins more. One of the minis broke up in the middle, so I had a perfect test piece for tasting and playing around with the glazé/frosting. (For a non-native speaker it is really difficult for me to grasp the difference. I also do not really understand the difference between batter and dough - I guess dough is thicker, more for breads or so. And what's the difference between molds, pans, forms etc.?)

For the frosting/glazé I took a spanish organic white chocolate infused with lime and littlle sprinkles of red pepper (which I could spot in the chocolate but dissappeared somehow in the end-result). I spread some shredded coconut over the glazé, but had the feeling that it looks better without.
 I LOVE this cake! This is just my cup of tea. It wasn't dry at all. The subtile coconut taste was just perfect and matched perfectly with the very subtile lime flavour. Both taste weren't too dominant, but that's how it should be (according to my preferences). I love how the minis look like, I love the texture of the cake, I love the not-too-sweet-sweetness. I could do this again and again and again.


 Maybe it's because I am Austrian, and as I am Viennese, I guess I am just the perfect Austrian-Hungarian combination Dorie mentions in the prelude to the recipe, that has these kind of cakes in its genes :o]

Find the recipe in Dorie Greenspan's book "Baking" on p. 194-195, or on Carmen's blog!