Dairy free coconut cake

Still on my two weeks of no dairy. Mind you without these two weeks I would not have discovered coconut oil. It smells like summer in a jar! It has various uses in cooking but I used it, instead of butter, as the fat component of my cake.

This cake is a simple flavoured one, it is not overly sweet, in fact not sweet at all, and has subtle coconut, almond, and honey flavours. The almond taste comes from the huge quantities of ground almonds in this cake, there is very little flour at all.

Dairy free coconut cake

60g coconut oil
2 eggs, separated
120g honey
3 tablespoons almond milk/ soy milk/ rice milk
200g ground almonds
55g plain flour
tsp bicarbonate of soda
50g desiccated coconut

Preheat the oven to 160C/140C FAN. Grease (with a little oil) a springform cake tin. Line the base with parchment paper.

Gently heat the coconut oil until it has just melted. Mix together the egg yolks, milk and honey, add in the coconut oil, taking care that it is not so hot that it scrambles the eggs!

To the wet ingredients add the flour, bicarbonate of soda, coconut and almonds and mix to just combine. 

Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks, stir a third into the cake mix to loosen. Gently fold in the remaining egg whites. Pour the batter into the prepared tin and level the top. Bake in the preheated oven for ~30 minutes 

Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Its really good with banana ice cream on the side! It is just as lovely with a morning or afternoon cup of tea. It keeps really well, I am on day four and it is still fantastically moist.

n.b. you could easily make this cake gluten free by using either a gluten free flour blend or coconut flour