Ginger pecan and coconut cake.

Recently I brought BBC Cakes and Bakes and I must say this is one of my favourite cake books. There's around 100 recipes in this book, with each cake recipe displaying the calorie content, which makes it easier to chose the right recipes if you are trying to lose weight. My ginger, pecan and coconut cake is not one for those who are wanting to watch their weight as it comes in at around 700 calories per slice, but was so delicious it's worth the calorific content. I've adapted this recipe and turned it into a three layered cake and I added coconut. The addition of coconut adds sweetness and alongside the pecans which adds depth and the ginger fieriness was a perfect match made in heaven. This was a really easy cake to make and didn't require any complicated methods and a must try for all those who love flavoursome cakes. I added a ginger fudge icing which I love and what I've made before.
Here is how my ginger cake turned out:

Ginger, pecan and coconut cake.

I first started by mixing the butter, sugar, syrups and eggs together.

Butter, treacle and golden syrup.

Butter, treacle and golden syrup mixed.

Once beaten I sifted in flour, chopped ginger, chopped pecans and coconut and gently in-cooperated.

Pecans and ginger

Coconut and pecans added

I then placed the mixture in three baking tins.

Cake mixture

Cakes pre baking

After 45 minutes the cakes were baked and I left to cool before getting on with the ginger fudge icing.

Baked cakes

I've made this ginger fudge icing before, it's delicious and basically syrup from stem ginger in-cooperated in the buttercream.

Ginger fudge icing

I layered up the sites with ginger fudge, but wish I added more ginger fudge on the first layer as it would have been more visually effective.

Cakes layered up

As I was bringing this cake to church I wanted to add a lovely ribbon to make it look more pretty.

Recipe for pecan, ginger and coconut cake - adapted from BBC Good Food Cakes and Bakes - my adaptations are in brackets. The recipe is for a two layered cake but my adaptations are for a three layered cake.
Ingredients
200g - self -raising flour (I used 270g)
4 tbsp ground ginger (I used 3 tablespoons of ground ginger)
1tsp baking powder (I used 1 tablespoon baking powder)
200g butter (I used 270 g butter)
350g golden sugar (I used 250g golden sugar and 200g treacle)
100g light muscavodo sugar (I used 130g dark muscavodo sugar)
4 eggs, beaten (I used 6 eggs)
100g pecans (I used 50 g pecans)
100g crystallised ginger (I used 60g ginger)
I also added 50 g coconut.
Pinch of salt

The recipe and method for the  ginger fudge icing can be found here.

Method
1) Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas mark4/ Fan oven 160C. Butter and line the base of two 20cm/8 inch tins. Sift together the flour, ginger, baking powder and salt. Rub in the butter until it resembles crumbs - (I done this as stage 2)
2) Beat in the syrup, sugar, eggs, pecans, crystallised ginger and coconut. Pour into the tins and bake for 45 minutes until firm. Cool in the tins for 10 minutes and turn out on a wire rack.


xxx