Mandarin orange coconut cake

For obscure reasons I was not able to find out, in Switzerland tradition include giving bags of mandarin oranges, peanuts and a few chocolates. The kind of thing you might get at office or from a distant relative…. I was looking for a Christmassy dish, when I saw this on Cinco Quartos de Laranja who had seen it on All Recipes and then tweaked it a bit. By a happy coincidence, I actually had  way too many mandarin oranges on the fruit bowl, a tiny bit of coconut in my cupboard and just enough time to bake it. And, voila!, a Christmassy and at the same time fresh and casual dish. Actually, it is also delicious and light, with different flavors and textures in each bite. An excellent way of fooling kiddies into eating their daily dose of citrus.

Mandarin orange coconut cake

Ingredients

• 200g  flour and 1 spoon of baking powder, sifted
• 175g  sugar
• 170g  unsalted butter
• 150mL of mandarin orange juice
• The zest of 3-4 mandarin oranges
• 30g dry powdered coconut

Method

Preheat the oven to 180C. Coat a baking tray with baking spray (or butter and flour)

in a large bowl, beat the butter and the sugar until light and pale yellow.

Add the egg one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition.

Fold in the flour and mix well. Once it is well mixed, add the coconut, the mandarin orange juice and zest. Mix until the mixture is uniform.

Put the cake tin in the preheated oven. Bake the cake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean (about 30min)