Stone Fruit and Coconut Cake

This is an easy, but impressive looking cake. It requires no machinery – it’s all mixed by hand and it uses up any overripe fruit you have hanging about in the fridge. I used a combination of peaches, nectarines and plums; but this cake would work just as well with chopped apple and/or pear.

My baby-making days ended the day I gave birth to my son. I literally wept tears of not just joy, but relief…. After having a third, beautiful and healthy child, I rejoiced in never having to go through long, drawn-out pregnancies and hours and hours of painful pushing ever again. This mumma’s shop well and truly shut for business, for good, two years ago.

That being said, my ovaries were sending me very different messages when I recently went to visit a very dear and long-time friend of mine who had just given birth to her second precious little boy. I could feel my uterus dancing when I held this tiny baby and smelt that gorgeous new baby smell. My goodness, there is not a cake in the world that smells as sweet as that, is there?!? I forgot how quickly they transform from tiny and warm wrapped-up sleeping bundles, to tiny terrors breeding mess and destruction all over the house!

I wanted to visit with homemade morning tea, so I decided to find a way to use up the manky-looking peaches, sad-looking plums and poor, neglected nectarines that were taking up precious real estate in my fridge. This recipe is great. Basically a muffin mix, so no fancy technique or equipment required and chopped ripe fruit scattered through the centre.

A delicious, sweet and fruity treat that was a perfect pick-me-up for a sleep-deprived mumma of two.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cup shredded coconut
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 free-range eggs lightly beaten
• 125mls milk
• 125g melted butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 6-7 peeled and chopped stone fruit (any combination of peaches, nectarines or plums)*
• Icing sugar and dollop cream to serve

Method:

• Pre-heat a fan-forced oven to 180 degrees celcius.
• Grease a 23cm springform cake pan and line base with greaseproof paper.
• With a spatula, mix together flour, sugar, coconut and baking powder in a large bowl.
• In another bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, melted butter and vanilla until just combined.
• Make a well in the dry ingredients and add in wet ingredients. Mix with a whisk until mixture comes together (don’t overbeat).
• Add half of the cake mixture to the pan.
• Scatter chopped fruit in a single layer along the surface of the cake mix in the pan.
• Add the other half of the cake mix to cover the fruit.
• Bake in a moderate fan-forced oven for 50 minutes. Remove from the spring form pan and allow to cool.
• Once cool, dust the cake generously with icing sugar and serve with dollop cream.

*The amount of fruit depends on the size of the fruit you are using. I used 2 peaches, 2 nectarines and 1 red plum for the pictured cake. But you would probably need up to 8-10 small plums or 3-4 apples to make the same amount. The main idea is that you have enough fruit to scatter along the cake batter in a SINGLE layer only.

Mrs. Magic Pantry XO