Coconut and lime sheet pan cake

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups of canola oil
• 1/4 cup lime juice (perfectly okay to use pre-squeezed, especially given the price of limes!)
• Zest from 2 limes
• 1 & 3/4 cup of plain yoghurt
• 1/2 cup of dessicated coconut
• 4 cups of plain flour
• 6 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• For the icing:
• 250 grams of cream cheese
• 3 cups of icing sugar, sifted
• 1 tablespoon of lime juice
• 1/2 teaspoon of coconut essence
• 1 tablespoon of hot water if needed

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 160 degrees centigrade. Grease a large rectangular pan (mine is 25 x 32cm) and line longways with one long sheet of baking paper that overhangs the edge at each end, so that you can use the baking paper to extract the cake later on.
• In a large bowl, beat together the sugar, oil, eggs, yoghurt, lime and zest until it is all smooth and well-combined.
• Add the flour, baking powder, coconut and salt to the bowl. Stir gently until the mixture is combined.
• Pour the batter into the prepared roasting tin and bake for 45 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean after inserting into the cake.
• Allow the cake to cool in the tin. When you want to ice it, use the baking paper like handles at either end to carefully lever it out.
• To make the icing, bring the cream cheese to room temperature. Place it in a large bowl with the coconut essence, lime juice and icing sugar. If the cream cheese is still quite cold and stiff, add up to a tablespoon of warm water.
• Beat the icing ingredients until thick and smooth. Spread the icing on the cake and sprinkle a little more dessicated coconut over the top if you like.

About this recipe

This cake is a riff from a delicious Annabel Langbein number…it’s a hard one to track down, but it is this Coconut and Lemon cake. I’ve changed it up in this recipe to switch the lemon to lime and to make it a sheet pan version (easier for cutting up chunks for a crowd!). I’m particularly pleased to report the limes in the recipe and photos are some I grew myself. My long-suffering lime tree is generally unresponsive to my attenpts to coax it to grow anything, periodically shedding all of its leaves and looking like a sad and lonely stick in pot, to all the world giving a good impression of being dead. This year I have ignored it completely and it is now sporting not only glossy happy leaves but also a number of fruit. You don’t have to use all fresh limes to get the juice in this recipe given the eye-watering price of limes at time. I normally don’t although obviously I’ve no excuses this time, given my small crop at home. We had this cake for a family birthday and it fed all 14 people there, plus plenty of leftovers. The coconut in this cake means it keeps well, although with the cream cheese in the icing, you don’t want to keep it past 3 days.