Bitches Love Feijoas Part Two

Feijoa And Coconut Cake

I love feijoas, I think 98% of people do but my lovely flatmate is in the 2%. Not only does she not like the taste of feijoas she also doesn’t like the smell and as we had bowls of feijoas overflowing on the kitchen the table the smell of feijoas was permeating every corner of the house.  I decided to put her out of her misery and get my feijoa baking on. 

My go-to source for feijoa recipes is this awesome blog, aptly named Feijoa Feijoa. I chose this recipe for Feijoa and Coconut cake, actually there were quite a few recipes for feijoa and coconut cake (a popular combination) but this one looked the most interesting with ginger and lime and it used the most feijoas. Some cakes had only 4 or 6 feijoas, surely you can barely taste them in a whole cake? 
I took half the cake to the lab for morning tea and it was very warmly received. One person who came late just kept cutting off tiny corners until she asked us to take it away from her. It is very moist and you can really taste the feijoa, which is what you want when you are baking a feijoa cake after all).

It was an easy recipe to make (method wise) but I used my flatmate’s KitchenAid (the one who hates feijoas) which I guess is kind of cheating. 

Ingredients

§  2 cups feijoa flesh

§  ¼ cup lime juice (My god limes are expensive! I used 1 lime and 3 lemons)

§  150g butter

§  1 ½ cups caster sugar

§  3 eggs, separated

§  2 cups desiccated coconut (I used threaded as it was all we had and it worked really well)

§  2 cups flour

§  2 teaspoons ground ginger

§  2 teaspoons creme of tartar

§  1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

§  1 teaspoon baking powder

§  1 pinch salt

§  1 cup milk (if necessary) – I used a splash of milk but it probably didn’t need it.

Method

1.       Scoop the feijoa flesh into a bowl and pour over the lime juice. Set aside while you continue with the recipe.

2.       In a (very) large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy. Beat in the egg yolks.

3.       Fold in the coconut and sifted dry ingredients. Add the fruit. At this point I was thinking there was no way there was enough moisture and added the splash of milk but once the mixing got going it was actually fine so maybe hold off        on the milk until you’re sure (If necessary, add some milk, bit by bit).

4.       Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold into the cake mixture.

5.       Turn into a well-greased and lined 23 or 25cm cake tin.

6.       Bake at 180°C for 1 hour or until cooked. The recipe said to put several layers of newspaper under the tin after about 30 minutes and I didn’t quite understand it. Put the newspaper in the oven? Won’t it catch fire? I didn’t do it and           the    cake was fine. Cool for 10 minutes before turning out.

* I did not intentionally take the photo with a slice missing, Matthew had a midnight snack.