Coconut and lime buttermilk cake

This was the last of the cakes I made for Comic Relief. My colleagues were very generous and in total we raised £61.82, which I'm very proud of. I think this will help to make a real difference to a child's life (and hopefully more than one) so it really was worthwhile doing 'something funny for money'!!! I hope you'll want to try this one too - it was light and moist and delicious....

Coconut and lime cake
Ingredients
33og plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
2/3tsp bicarbonate of soda
230g low fat natural yogurt
165g softened butter
265g caster sugar
4 large eggs

100g creamed coconut, grated

For the buttercream icing

100g very soft butter

Around 300g icing sugar

Grated zest and juice 2 limes

100g creamed coconut, grated

Method
- Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and line an 8 x 12" cake tin.
- Sift the flour, baking powder and bicarb together into a bowl and set aside.
- Weigh the yogurt into a small bowl.
- Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl using an electric mixer until light and fluffy.
- Mixing slowly, add the eggs one at a time, continuing to mix for 30 seconds between each. Add a spoonful of flour if you're worried about the mixture splitting.
- Add flour mixture and yogurt alternately until all used up, blending well after each addition.
- When all thoroughly combined, stir in the grated creamed coconut.
- Spoon into the prepared tin then bake for 45 - 50mins (but start checking at 40 mins if you know your oven is hot) until a skewer/cake tester comes out clean when inserted into the middle.
- Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin before unmoulding and allowing to cool completely on a wire rack.

For the icing:
- Gently melt the coconut cream with the lime juice and zest in a small pan. Allow to cool.
- Cream together the butter and 200g icing sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add a little of the melted (cooled) coconut lime mixture and a bit more icing sugar and mix in well. Keep adding a little more coconut/lime and a bit more icing sugar until it tastes nice and is a good consistency for spreading. (Sorry this is a bit vague, I sort of did it as I went along!)
- Spread the buttercream icing onto the cake.
- Enjoy the fruits of your labour!!!!


I cut this into 18 generous pieces.

It was very much enjoyed at work and I had lots of recipe requests for it. I think the buttercream icing went down particularly well. T managed to get a piece of this cake for once (as we were both visiting home simultaneously!) and his comments were 'It's not very coconutty' but he did like the buttercream. However, it smelled seriously coconutty while it was baking. Sadly I can't tell you whether his tastebuds are rubbish or not as I couldn't eat this one myself. So..... you'll just have to try it out for yourself and see what you think! Do you agree with my colleagues at work that it's fab - or my darling brother, that it's not very coconutty???

Do let me know what you think if you make it!