Easter cake 2011

No Simnel cake for us this year - I'm cracking out a lemon and coconut cake courtesy of the Easter Asda magazine. Pretty tasty too, although as with my last 3-layer cake, the sponges seem to be slightly undercooked. I put them in for the time suggested, a skewer came out clean, but still when I got the cakes out of the tins, they were a bit undercooked underneath. Need to work on that!

I have also found a recipe for POP cakes - they're little round cakey, lollipopy things. I'm going to put them together tomorrow but first you start with a chocolate sponge (fortunately this appeared to bake properly!)...



The lemon coconut cake :



225ml milk
5tbsp lemon juice
350g caster sugar
finely grated zest of 2 large unwaxed lemons (my 2 lemons provided me with all the lemon juice I needed)
100g dessicated coconut
300g plain flour
1 1/2tsp baking powder
1/2tsp bicarbonate of soda
225g butter
4 eggs
Filling :
100g unsalted butter, softened
100g icing sugar
300g soft cheese
1/4tsp vanilla extract
1tbsp lemon juice
150g lemon curd

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease and line 3 20cm shallow cake tins. Put the milk and tbsp lemon juice in a jug. Stir and leave to stand for at least 5 minutes.

Put the rest of the lemon juice in a pan with 75g sugar and heat gently until all the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon zest and coconut. Set aside.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda.

Cream the butter and the rest of the sugar. Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time.

Fold in the flour, milk and coconut mix. Transfer to the tins, level the tops and bake for 25 minutes or until the tops spring back when lightly pressed. Cool on a wire rack.

For the filling, cream the butter and icing sugar (although I thought I had creamed well, I was still left with some lumps of butter in the final filling. I suspect it was not softened as much as it should have been), then beat in the soft cheese, vanilla and lemon juice.

Sandwich the cakes with the lemon curd and two-thirds of the filling. Spread the rest on the top and decorate, if desired.