Lemon Coconut Loaf Cake

I just love coconut, so when I found a recipe for Lemon Coconut Loaf Cake on Allrecipes I just had to try it.

A lovely light cake, with some thin icing brushed over the top for more coconut to be sprinkled over is simply wonderful.

The recipe is quite easy to follow and doesn’t use a huge number of ingredients, but the resultant loaf cake really tastes superb.  The smell of the coconut filling the room as it bakes just whets the appetite so that you can hardly wait to get it out of the oven and start eating.

My version was browning around the edge and with 25 minutes to go I decided to put some tin foil around the edge to stop further browning.  Easy to do, just take an oblong of tin foil, slightly larger that the opening in your tin, fold over the edge to about a inch wide and cut out the centre.  Then just place on top of the baking cake.

Having taken it out of the oven and topped it with the icing and coconut it was simply a case of letting it cool until completely cold and then cutting myself a slice. The taste is just wonderful, and extremely moreish. 

Ingredients:
For the cake:

• 120g butter
• 200g caster sugar
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 eggs
• 200g self-raising flour
• pinch salt
• 120ml semi-skimmed milk
• 4 tablespoons dessicated coconut
• 1 or 2 teaspoons grated lemon peel

For the lemon icing:

• 3 tablespoons icing sugar
• 2 or 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• Extra dessicated coconut, if you like

1. Preheat your oven to 180 C 160 C Fan/350F / gas mark 4. 
2. Lightly grease a 900g loaf tin.
3. In a mixing bowl, cream butter, sugar and lemon juice. 
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
5. Sieve the flour and salt; add to creamed butter mixture alternately with the milk. 
6. Stir in the dessicated coconut and grated lemon.
7. Pour into the loaf tin and bake for 60-70 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. 
8. If the edge of the cake is browning too quickly you can cover just the edge with silver foil to stop it from burning.
9. Cool for 10 minutes in the tin, then remove from the tin onto a wire rack.
10. Stir the lemon juice into the icing sugar to make a slightly thick (but still runny) icing to and brush over the cake. 
11. Sprinkle more coconut over the top, if you like. Let it harden slightly before slicing.