Coconut Pineapple Cake

I was talking to one of my colleagues at work, and she was telling me about the flavour of the cake on her wedding. She was the one who introduced me to Coconut Pineapple cake flavour, and then the research began…. For a perfect eggless coconut pineapple cake, with perfect fresh cream coconut icing. This recipe is the result of about 2 or 3 different experiments, which were done on my extremely eager and zealous guinea pigs :-p

This is a fabulous recipe, and I used it to make the base cake for the Pirate cake for my twins’ 4th birthday cake. I also used the same recipe to make cupcakes and they came out amazing as well. The only difference in the cupcakes was that I used cream cheese icing instead of fresh cream icing…still great!

In the picture of the Pirate cake below, the base cake, (where you can see the white sides) is the coconut pineapple cake. The boat is a chocolate cake covered in two types of ganache, which I will cover in my post about Chocolate Ganache frosting. There are lots of elements to this Pirate cake, which I have covered in another post about this cake.

Makes a 7 inch cake

For the cake:

Ingredients:

Plain Flour – 1 1/3 cups

Baking Soda- 3/4 teaspoon

Baking powder – 1 1/2 teaspoons

Condensed Milk – 1/2 tin (See notes)

Pineapple juice from pineapple tin – 200 – 250 gms (see notes)

Finely desiccated coconut – 3/4 cup

Pineapple pieces (round pieces) from tin – 5 (See notes)

Vanilla essence – 1 teaspoon

Butter, softened – 4 tablespoons

For the Fresh Cream Icing:

Double Cream – 170 ml

Icing sugar – 2 tablespoons

Mascarpone cheese – 3 heaped tablespoons

Finely dessicated coconut – 2 heaped tablespoons

Pineapple pieces (round pieces) from tin, chopped – 2

Vanilla essence – 1 teaspoon

Method:

For the cake:

Preheat oven at 180 degrees C.

Sift together the Plain flour, baking soda and baking powder. Add the dessicated coconut, and mix well.

At least 2-3 hours before starting to make the cake, open the pineapple tin and run the pineapple and juice through a sieve to drain the juice. Don’t throw away the pineapple juice, as you are going to use this in the cake. Let the pieces dry a little bit as 2 of these will be sandwiched between the layers of the cake, and will make the cake soggy if they are wet.

Make sure all liquid ingredients are at room temperature, and the butter is soft but not liquid. In a food processor or blender, blend together 3 pineapple pieces along with the pineapple juice, so that you get pineapple pulp.

In a separate bowl, mix together the condensed milk, vanilla essence and softened butter. Mix till well blended. Finally add the pineapple pulp and mix well again.

Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in all the well blended wet ingredients. Mix well with hand, but don’t overbeat. Do not use a hand blender at all, since this will ruin the batter.

Once the batter is ready, put it in a well greased 7 inch pan and bake at 200 degrees C for 10 minutes, and at 150 degrees C for further 10 minutes. Alternatively, you can bake at 180 degrees C for about 18 minutes. Bake till a toothpick inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.

Take the cake out of the oven and let it stand for 10 minutes. Then invert it on a wire rack and leave to cool further.

For the Fresh Cream Icing:

Keep the whisk and bowl in the fridge at least an hour before beating the cream.

Whisk the double cream and icing sugar in a food processor/hand held whisk till stiff peaks form.

In a separate bowl, beat the mascarpone cheese till softened. We are using the icing sugar and mascarpone cheese to stabilise the cream so that it doesn’t melt at room temperature and it stays for longer.

Fold (don’t beat!!) in the beaten cream and dessicated coconut into the mascarpone cheese.

Once the cake is cooled down, cut it horizontally into 2 pieces. Spread the frosting on the top of the bottom piece. Spread the 2 dried, chopped pineapple pieces on top of the cream. Put the top layer of the cake on top of the bottom layer. Spread the remaining frosting on the top and sides of the cake and enjoy!!

Notes:

1. I have used a 397 gm tin condensed milk can. Even if you have slightly bigger or smaller, it won’t make a lot of difference.
2. The pineapple tin should have pineapple in own juice, not syrup. If you can’t find such a tin, then discard the syrup and only use the pineapples. For the pineapple juice, use good quality Pineapple juice from a bottle/carton.
3. The pineapple pieces should be dry as some of them will be used as a filling between cake layers and wet pineapple will make the cake soggy. Drain the juice in a bowl, and set the pieces aside to dry 2-3 hours before starting to bake.