Sticky apricot and coconut cake with butterscotch sauce recipe

Sticky apricot and coconut cake with butterscotch sauce

 

I got inspiration for the cake from sticky date pudding and malva pudding. Sticky date pudding, a date based cake, is popular in the UK and malva pudding seems to have originated in South Africa. Malva pudding has apricot jam.

I love coconuts so I decided to ‘upgrade’ malva pudding by adding coconut. I thought coconuts and apricot would go well together, and it did thankfully.

The cake is sticky as the name suggests, and moist. The cake on its own is not very sweet so the sauce is definitely a welcome addition. The sauce is necessary, having sticky cake without the sauce is like having a burger without the bun.

And if you are a bit health conscious, you will notice that there is very little fat in the cake. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the sauce. If you are conscious of the calorie count, you can reduce or eliminate butter from the sauce. It will not be the same obviously but still very tasty.

The photo is for a single serve cake. I reduced the amounts by four and baked one little cake in a small rectangle baking pan. The regular amount will make 4 servings.

Ingredients

30 ml butter

2 tablespoons apricot jam

1 egg

¾ cup flour

¼ cup desiccated coconut

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

½ cup sugar

½ cup milk

For the sauce

160ml cream

¾ cup brown sugar

50g butter

2 tsp vanilla essence

Directions

1.       Soak the coconut in milk for at least 30 minutes

2.      Cream together the butter and sugar

3.      Add the egg, jam, coconut and milk and beat together

4.      Stir in the dry ingredients

5.      Pour the batter into a greased 21cm baking pan and bake at 180C until the top is browned and a skewer comes out clean, about 45 minutes

6.      To make the sauce, add all the ingredients to a saucepan and cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes

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