Banana Coconut Cake and CookBlogShare Week 18

If you are a regular reader you will know how I love to experiment with baking. I love trying out new ingredients, especially healthier options and super foods.

So when Indigo Herbs asked me if I would like to try some of their organic, gluten free baking ingredients I could not wait to get experimenting and baking. When the products arrived I was delighted to see that it included some of my favourite ingredients, coconut products! I have recently discovered both coconut flour and coconut oil and have enjoyed baking with them both. I was excited to see that they had also sent me some coconut sugar which is an ingredient which I have not used before but have wanted to try out. If you are using coconut flour for the first time it is important to remember that coconut flour has a completely different consistency to regular flour. It is much more absorbent so requires more liquid and/or extra eggs. It is great to use as an addition to other flours. In this recipe I have combined it with gluten free rice flour and it has worked perfectly.

Indigo Herbs are an online shop where you can find any health food supplements that you may need. It is full of foods and tips to help you have a healthier lifestyle and include more superfoods in your everyday diet. I can see this being an online shop that we will continue to order from for the supplements that we love to add to our foods.

I really did enjoy baking with the coconut products and will admit that this was my second attempt at the cake. As I mentioned before, coconut flour behaves differently to regular flour and my first cake was too dense so after a few adjustments I found the perfect recipe. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do and I look forward to sharing more coconut recipes with you!

This is what I did...

Organic Banana Coconut Cake

Ingredients

150g Organic Coconut Oil

150g Organic Coconut Sugar
4 Eggs
75g Rice flour
75g Organic Coconut Flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp xantham gum
2 ripe bananas, mashed
2 tsp Organic Banana Powder

Method

Pre heat the oven to 180C/160Fan/Gas mark 4

1 - Cream together the coconut oil and coconut sugar until you have a smooth consistency

2 - Add the eggs, one at a time, with a little coconut flour to prevent curdling

3 - Mix together the remaining coconut flour with the baking powder and xantham gum and stir into the cake mixture until you have a smooth cake batter

4 - Fold in the mashed bananas and pour the mixture into a lined and greased tin, to grease the tin use a little coconut oil

5 - Place in the centre of the pre heated oven and bake for 40 minutes or until the cake is springy to the touch and a knife comes out clean

6 - Once thoroughly baked remove from the oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes before removing from the tin and leaving to cool on a cooling rack

7 - Before serving sprinkle the banana powder over the top as you would icing sugar for a healthier topping!

This is an incredibly moist and light cake. The banana paired with the coconut gives this cake a real tropical taste. 

The coconut products that I used for this cake are 100% natural and no extra nasties added and along with the banana you can guarantee that it is not only a delicious cake, but at last you have a cake which is good for you!

Enjoy x

I also received some black and plain tahini so keep you eye out for a delicious savoury recipe using that versatile ingredient.

Disclosure: I was sent the organic products for the purpose of this post. No cash payment was received. All words, views and opinions are my own and 100% honest.

Now onto Cook Blog Share. Thank you again to Hayley at Snap Happy Bakes for hosting last week. There were so many delicious recipes, but if you missed my favourite four you can find them here

Back to this week. Please can I just recap the rules when joining in:

• Comment on the hosts blog post, some weeks we do miss a few so would love some comment love back!
• Don't forge to pop over and comment on at least 2 other posts
• If you tweet me, @k_phillipson, your post I will retweet them
• I also pin every post and share on Google+ if you would like to follow the boards and join the Google+ you can by following here Pintrest CookBlogShare board and Google+.
• You can share any foodie posts and recipes, old or new.
• Add the badge to the bottom of your post so that others can join in and find us.

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