Orange & Coconut Syrup Cake

Do you have an excess of oranges? This amazing orange syrup coconut cake is moist and tangy thanks to the winning combination of orange and coconut. The orange and vanilla syrup helps keep it moist for a few days-that is, if it lasts that long! And it is frosted with a tangy orange buttercream frosting!

This cake has a wonderfully moist texture to it. It's a syrup cake so you pour the hot syrup over the hot cake and it will absorb it well. In this cake we use a simple syrup so that it isn't viscous or thick and can absorb into the cake well. This is a cake decorator's trick to keeping your cakes fresh longer as cake decorators can decorate their cakes up to a week in advance. This cake lasted for a week in the fridge and was wonderful until the very last crumb.

Other uses for the syrup: cocktails, pancakes, fresh soda-even drizzling a bit on a fresh fruit salad gives less sweet fruit a nice sweetness.

Use other citrus: lemons, grapefruit, limes, blood oranges and tangelos and any other citrus works really well in this cake

Don't like coconut? Use ground almonds or nuts!

Do I have to make the syrup? Of course not, but this gives the cake an extra layer of tangy citrus and keeps it moist.

This cake is close to a 10 out of 10 for me. I rate things according to how moreish they are and when I can't stop eating something I know it's a 10 because I can be disciplined about most things except chips and popcorn.

Mr NQN sometimes gives me ratings for the food that we eat and recently we were out to dinner with our friends Monica and Marco. I was in charge of ordering the food so I asked them, "How hungry are you guys?" as I knew Monica was just starting to eat again after a bout with the stomach flu.

"On a scale of 1 to 7 let me think..." said Marco.

"Hang on, your scale goes from 1 to 7? Why can't you make it out of 10?" I said, confused. Marco is a very quirky but sweet guy, sort of like Mr NQN. They get along really well and nerd out about lots of things while Monica and I nerd out about food.

Monica sighed, "I apologise."

"10 is easier for figuring out the halfway point," I said to Marco.

"The half way point of 7 is 5," said Marco.

"Half of 7 isn't 5. What is your maths?" I said totally bewildered at this point. I mean I'm terrible at maths but I knew that wasn't half of 7.

"Okay halfway is 4," conceded Marco.

At that point I was too busy laughing at my brain exploding at Marco's maths. I never quite got to the bottom of how hungry he was but I ordered food and it seemed to be a little under what we normally would order but then again I was dealing with a completely unfamiliar scale!

So tell me Dear Reader, what is your normal scale out of? 10? 5? or 7? Do you like syrup cakes?

Orange & Coconut Syrup Cake

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: 40 minutes

Cooking time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Serves: 8

• 200g/7ozs. plain all purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons cornflour/fine cornstarch
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 50g/1.7ozs. desiccated coconut
• 175g/6ozs. caster sugar
• 125g/4ozs. butter, room temperature cut into cubes
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 125ml/4flozs orange juice
• 125ml/4flozs coconut milk
• Finely grated zest of 2 oranges

Orange and vanilla syrup

• 250ml/8.8flozs orange juice
• 70g/2.3ozs caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Orange Buttercream (optional)

• 40g/1.4ozs. butter
• 300g/10.6ozs icing sugar
• 100ml/3.5flozs. orange juice
• Pinch of salt
• Orange zest to decorate

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 180C/350F and line a 450g/1 pound loaf tin with parchment on the base and sides. Whisk the flour, cornflour, baking powder, coconut and caster sugar together in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a beater attachment and beat for 30 seconds. Add the butter cubes one at a time on low speed. It will start to look like buttercream. Whisk the eggs, orange juice, coconut milk and orange zest in a jug and pour into the batter in two lots on low speed until combined.

Step 2 - Scoop into prepared tin and bake for 1 hour 10 minutes or until the centre springs back when touched.

Step 3 - Make the orange syrup. Boil the orange juice and caster sugar for 3 minutes or until sugar has dissolved. Add vanilla and set aside. Poke holes in the top of the warm cake still in the tin and pour the syrup into the cake - use as much or as little as you want and if you use it all it will be sweeter and denser. Cool completely in the tin and when ready, remove from the tin.

Step 4 - To make the buttercream beat the butter for 1 minute, then add the icing sugar, orange juice and salt and beat until smooth. Spread over the cooled cake and grate zest over the cake. I added nasturtiums too.