Blueberry coconut cake
Ingredients
450g very soft butter (not melted)
450g castor sugar
2/3 tbsp vanilla extract
8 large eggs
400g self raising flour (or regular flour with 4 level tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt)
50g cornflour
½ tsp baking powder
½ cup desiccated coconut
A punnet of washed blueberries (or frozen blueberries but they make the batter all purple so I prefer fresh ones)
4-5 tbsp milk
3 large circle cake tins lined with baking parchment
Icing and blueberry sauce
½ cup blueberries
½ cup sugar
Approximately 170g cream cheese
3-4 tbsp butter
500-600g icing sugar
Vanilla extract
How to make!
Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees and line the cake tins before you start, setting them to the side.
Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy and light then add the vanilla.
Add the eggs one by one, mixing them in slowly before adding the next one until they’re all incorporated properly.
Mix all the dry ingredients together and add to the egg mixture gently.
Add the milk until the batter is a dropping consistency and is smooth, then fold in the blueberries.
Pour your batter into your prepared tins and pop into the oven for about 25 minutes, checking on them every while and turning them around so they cook evenly.
When they’re finished you can test them with a toothpick to see if they’re completely cooked. If they aren’t done yet just pop them back in for 5-10 minutes and then check again.
When they are done take them out and let them cool down completely before taking them out of their tins and starting to decorate.
Once the cakes are cooled down you can start on your icing starting with the blueberry sauce.
Put the blueberries and sugar into a small pot on medium heat stirring every little bit till it becomes a sauce. It takes about 10-15 minutes. Then take it off the heat and let cool down.
For the icing I usually eyeball the amounts as I go for this one. Whisk the cream cheese and butter together with the icing sugar until its all fluffy and add the vanilla. Start out with half the required cream cheese and add more if the icing is too thick as I found it thins it out a lot if I add too much.
To assemble the cake, place a layer top-down bottom up on the plate you want to serve it on and spread a layer of icing on it and then some of the sauce. Repeat this with the other layers.
I like leaving this as a naked cake with the blueberries visible in the cake on the sides and the sauce slightly dripping out the sides. On top of the cake, it looks nice to use the blueberry sauce to make a circular pattern or zigzags.
You can replace the sauce with fresh blueberries and sprinkle some coconut over the top to finish instead. This makes quite a large cake and can also be made as a traybake. It can be halved but will make only 2 medium-small cake layers then.