I’ve been tinkering in the kitchen a lot lately – there’s been a whole lot of vegan experimenting going on.

This coconut cake is the most recent thing to come out of the oven. If there’s one thing I truly love, it’s coconut. Okay, truth be told, there are many flavours that I hold in high esteem, but coconut is definitely up there on the list with olives – now is not the time to discuss olives, I digress. I was happy with how this little cake turned out. It’s a delicious, if rustic, slice of hearty coconut goodness – and it’s dairy-free, egg-free, and 100% vegan. Who needs eggs when you have flax meal? I could make my own by grinding up flax seeds but I’m incredibly lazy. I like to buy my flax seeds already ground in a convenient bag and store it in the fridge for safekeeping.

I used cinnamon this time around but plan on trying nutmeg or cardamom on my next go. The cinnamon adds an extra note of sweetness, speaking of which – I could easily reduce the sugar and take this cake in a more savoury direction with some minor tweaking like omitting the cinnamon and adding something like sage. Gasp.

Here it is, fellow eaters and coconut lovers:

Rustic Coconut Cake

2 tbsp flax meal
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp water
2-1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1-1/2 cups unsweetened shredded coconut
1 cup sugar
2-1/2 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg or cardamom (optional)
1 cup plain soy milk
1/2 cup plain soy yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup earth balance, melted (or other vegan buttery spread)
powdered sugar

• Preheat oven to 325°F.
• Prepare a 9″ round baking pan – line bottom with parchment paper and grease and flour sides.
• In a small bowl mix flax meal and water and beat with a fork until frothy. Set aside.
• In a large bowl, measure flour, coconut, baking powder, sugar, and spices – fold gently until just combined.
• In a medium bowl, measure soy milk, soy yogurt, and vanilla. Take flax meal and water mixture and beat again slightly before adding to soy milk mixture. Whisk wet ingredients together until frothy.
• Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and fold gently, until just combined. Incorporate melted butter, folding until just combined – do not over mix.
• Transfer batter to prepared pan and bake for 1 hr 15 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean and top bounces back when lightly depressed.
• Cool in pan for 10 minutes before transferring to rack to cool completely.
• Dust with powdered sugar.
• Eat.

The recipe splits very easily into a half portion if your preference is for a smaller cake (I used two 7-inch heart pans the second time around). I’ve tried adding nutmeg and cardamom, as well as using cinnamon alone, and each version was lovely. This cake achieves excellent loft, has a sweet, delicate flavour, and strikes a good textural balance between a cake and bread-like consistency – and there’s always that other measure of success: fast diminishing quantities.