Sunday's topsy turvy cake

My parents arrived for the weekend on Friday night. The culinary inevitabilities would include pizza (always when there are guests), soup (Dad loves this and it probably explains his envy inducing slimness) and bread and cheese (the rest of us love this and it probably explains our non-slimness). And the temporary swelling of household numbers would also be a good excuse for a nice piece of cake.

Saturday was a busy day in the garden, and by the time we had cleaned it and ourselves up and taken my mother-in-law’s Yorkshire terrier for an evening walk at the beach (once all the tourists had gone home), there was no time for cake making. Especially as I wanted to indulge a bit in my favourite fruit based word game.

By the time Sunday came around cake was very clearly on mine and my husband Matt’s mind. We prepared ourselves with a swim, our first since holiday. I felt very out of shape and if I’m going to make a habit of cake making I’m going to need to put a bit more vigour into my lengths than I did yesterday.

Matt was keen that I use up:

1) a large quantity of desiccated coconut. I have no idea how we’ve got so much as I don’t ever remember buying any

2) some cherries preserved in some sort of continental spirit which were opened a while ago in error and have since been sat unused in the fridge

Both were well past their “best-before” dates. I inspected the cherries. As predicted they were fine, they are after all preserved in alcohol and will probably last almost forever. I tasted the coconut. I have no idea what gone-off coconut would taste like, but it too seemed fine. So I was left with the dilemma of whether to try and combine these two ingredients (there must be weirder combinations than coconut and cherry), use one of them (and save the other for another day), or bake something entirely unrelated to either.

My preferred thought to deploy the cherries in a Black Forest gateau. I’ve always wanted to go there to eat this in situ, although I think I might actually be disappointed and find that the Black Forest gateau is something invented in England in the 1970s and has nothing to do with the Black Forest. But at 7pm on a Sunday there was no whipping cream to be had in our local convenience store (not so convenient if you need whipping cream) and I thought that spray cream wouldn’t create the desired effect. So I decided to keep the cherries for another day and use the coconut.

I think that coconut on its own is a bit boring and was thinking about making a pineapple upside down cake with coconut sponge. A kind of baked pina colada. But I also had cake-stand full of almost over ripe nectarines and kiwis that I was no way going to be able to eat in the conventional way before they started to ferment. This called for a multi-fruit topsy turvy cake with coconut sponge.

So I arranged the nectarines and kiwis in the bottom of a big tin. It didn’t look like quite enough fruit so I added some of my bargain tinned strawberries. I was worried that it was all a bit wet so sprinkled over some brown sugar, resisted the urge to add coconut liqueur and put the lot in the oven at a lowish temperature to evaporate and caramelise a bit.

In the meantime I had to make the sponge. Since I could not find a suitable recipe for coconut sponge it would have to be somewhat improvised. It would be an improvisation on my mum’s trusty 6,6,6,3,3,3 cake, only these are in imperial measurements and I prefer metric. So:

1) 150g butter (or butter substitute) and 150g sugar creamed together

2) 3 eggs, beaten and added one at a time with a tablespoon of flour with each one (I’ve no idea if this flour thing is really necessary but recipes always tell you to do this)

3) 150g flour, added gradually so as to make sure it doesn’t get too try (I think maybe the flour you add with the eggs is supposed to come out of the 150g but I forgot to weigh that)

4) 50g desiccated coconut, stirred in. I was cautious with this as I didn’t want to dry the mixture out but 50g didn’t seem to go very far so I added another 50g.

I poured this over the slightly cooked fruit and returned the whole lot to a hotter oven (about 180°C) and baked for about 30 minutes. I didn’t really know how long to bake for but it was looking brown after this long and the skewer test confirmed that it was at least not raw.

My mum declined my offer to drink the syrup that the strawberries had come in but rather than waste is suggested that I could turn it into a sauce. I thought that this might be overly sweet so added some orange juice and zest and set over the hob to reduce. It didn’t appear to be reducing at all and after about 10 minutes I lost patience and threw in a spoonful of corn flour. Mum then gave me a corn flour tip: mix it up with a small amount of water first. But it was too late and I spent the next 15 minutes removing lumps of corn flour. But I added another spoonful in the manner advised by my mum and the sauce duly thickened.

It was one of those bakes that I dread removing from the tin; I was concerned about major cake / fruit separation and didn’t dare risk an intermediate cooling rack between the tin and the serving plate. Amazingly it all held together and looked almost like something out of a French patisserie.

We served it (after soup and bread and cheese) with the sauce, and some spray cream for good measure. It was very delicious and despite all the coconut I had added nice and moist. There’s still half left but because of all the fruit I don’t think it’ll keep very long. Oh well, that’s lunch sorted.