Someone I know describes cakes as ‘wet’ or ‘dry’. Wet cakes are good. Dry cakes are not so good. Wet cakes that have fruit (including, weirdly, raisins or other dried fruit) in them are not as good as plain wet cakes. Dry cakes that are ‘squidgy’ – and that perversely includes, imagine, hot cross buns for instance, are better than dry cakes non-squidgy. Dry squidgy cakes that have fruit in them (ditto, hot cross buns) would be much better without the fruit.
She’s got issues. But also very definite requirements, albeit expressed in a kind of simplistic and philistine way, of what makes a good and a not so good cake. She eats quite a bit of my produce so I do heed those guidelines every now and then.
This is near-perfect – wet, no fruit, no raisins. Guess what – she asked if it could be made less orangey.
But weird demands aside, this is a glorious cake. Just the right moisture (wet), orange flavour fantastic (no, can’t be less), and slightly chewy on account of the coconut (she couldn’t even tell there was coconut involved – some people, eh? And you make all that effort to educate them).
Recipe courtesy of Dan Lepard, as usual excellent in his ‘Short and Sweet’ book.