coconut mascarpone cake with mascarpone

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coconut mascarpone cake with mascarpone

When you read this, my partner David and I will be celebrating our civil partnership: just another two gay people recording our love and commitment to each other, and nothing that should alarm any sane person. Yet while the politicians and church debate whether this is a marriage, with a degree of hate-mongering rhetoric for good measure, equally it’s clear to me that old wedding traditions don’t apply, either. A Skype camera at the town hall will film the event so Mum and Dad can watch it in Australia, and as no religion is involved, the words will be our own, and the food will be simply what we want to eat. So, as much as I admire the traditional iced fruit cake in the abstract, when it’s our ceremony, I can think of many other cakes I’d rather choose.

If you’re eating your celebration cake after the meal, try to balance the main course to suit, so you don’t leave everyone feeling bloated. The chefs from Comptoir Libanais will be cooking simple, light, Lebanese-inspired dishes for us, so there’ll be room for richness in the dessert.

Coconut mascarpone cake

This is the cake we’ll be eating after the ceremony today. You’ll find the crumb rich, moist and not overly fluffy, so it will slice well without crumbling and stay soft for a few days. Layer and fill with buttercream, if you like, and pipe a simple decoration around the outside. Makes one large square cake, enough for 25 servings.

350ml coconut milk
125g desiccated coconut
4 tsp vanilla extract
500g caster sugar
75g arrowroot or corn flour
75ml sunflower oil
125g white chocolate, broken into small pieces
200g mascarpone
8 medium eggs
375g plain flour
4 level tsp baking powder

Line the base and sides of a 23cm or 25cm square cake tin with nonstick paper. Bring the coconut milk to a boil, take off the heat, mix in the desiccated coconut and leave for 30 minutes. Beat in the vanilla, sugar and arrowroot. Put the oil and chocolate in a saucepan, warm until it melts, then beat through the coconut mix with the mascarpone. Beat in four whole eggs and four egg yolks, then sift in the flour and baking powder, and fold through evenly. Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then fold evenly through.

Spoon into the tin, cover loosely with foil – this helps keep the top of the cake level – and bake for about 90 minutes at 170C (150C fan-assisted)/335F/gas mark 3, removing the foil after 45 minutes. When a skewer comes out clean, it’s baked. Leave to cool in the tin, then slice it level across the top before decorating.

Mascarpone buttercream

Boiling the mascarpone with sugar first makes it stable for use in a buttercream for piping decorations with. It’s ever so rich, so, if you’re serving the cake after the meal, a spoonful of tart fruit compote will set it off well. You’ll need one batch of buttercream to fill the layers and hold the crumb in place, one more to give the outside a smooth finish and another to decorate with.

250g mascarpone
150g caster sugar
250g icing sugar
250g unsalted butter, softened
Vanilla extract or other flavouring

Spoon the mascarpone into a saucepan, stir in the caster sugar and bring to a boil. Leave to cool, then chill. Using the whisk attachment on an electric mixer, gradually beat the icing sugar and butter, chopped into rough pieces, until light and fluffy, then beat in the chilled mascarpone mixture just until mixed, no more.

Work with the buttercream while it’s cool but not fridge-cold, because the texture roughens when the butter gets hard. And if it gets too soft, just chill it a little and whip it gently again.

danlepard.com/guardian

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