Coconut Cream Cake Recipe

Heather Dessinger

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Gluten-free coconut cream cake

Note from Heather: If you love my piña colada inspired (rum-free) pineapple popsicles, you’re going to absolutely love this dreamy coconut cream cake recipe from Lorena of Green Healthy Cooking. Thank you for sharing with us today, Lorena! 

I feel truly honored to be invited over to guest post on Heather’s blog. I’ve been following the Mommypotamus for more than 4 years now and absolutely love the extraordinary work she does for all of us. Being able to create a coconut cream cake recipe for her readers, all of you guys, is about the most exciting challenge I’ve taken so far in my blogging career over at Green Healthy Cooking.

After discussing with Heather what kind of recipe you would probably like to see the most and after some baking tests to create that perrrrfect dessert, this gluten-free and dairy-free coconut cream cake was born. I almost called it coconut DREAM cake by the way!

Gluten-free and dairy-free but still delicious? Challenge accepted.

I find the biggest challenge in gluten-free baking to be creating “spongy” cakes and the biggest challenge with dairy-free icings is achieving the “creamy” texture of butter combined with super unhealthy icing sugar. My test bakes resulted in an incredibly spongy cake iced with the creamiest icing you’ve tasted in your life! Make this cake for any kind of celebration: birthday, wedding, anniversary, Mother’s day, Father’s day, TGIF…you name it.

It’s the first time I’ve worked with quinoa flour, which will now become a staple in my kitchen. Most almond flour cakes tend to be quite dense, but the quinoa flour in this recipe makes it spongy and airy. It does have a special taste to it, so an all quinoa flour cake will probably taste a bit weird, but the mix made the cake’s taste and texture an absolute dream. I’m sure you’ll love it as much as all of the lucky taste testers did.

I’ve got to warn you about this recipe though. The reason I wanted to call this Coconut Cream Cake coconut DREAM cake is because eating it will result in minds wandering off to white sandy beaches in Mexico, it tastes pretty much like a cold piña colada but in form of a piece of cake. Are you drooling yet?

gluten free coconut cream cake recipe

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4.50 from 6 votes

Coconut Cream Cake Recipe - Gluten Free

Calories
Author Heather Dessinger

Ingredients

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 325° F (160° C).
  • Grease bottom and sides of two 8" cake rounds with a little coconut oil, line bottom with parchment paper and then grease bottom again. (To get perfect circles place cake round on parchment paper and draw around it with a pen, then cut out just inside the line. Voilá.)
  • Add almond flour, quinoa flour, baking powder and salt to a bowl and whisk until well combined.
  • In a separate bowl whisk together eggs, maple syrup and coconut oil. Make sure all ingredients are at room temperature. If the eggs or maple syrup is too cold, the coconut oil will harden and form clumps and make the cake very oily. If the coconut oil has been melted over to high heat and is hot, the egg will start cooking.
  • Carefully fold dry ingredients into wet ingredients. Do not overmix or the cake will become dense. Just when the last dry ingredients start dissolving into the wet ingredients, stop folding.
  • Add half of the batter to one cake round and the other half to the other round. If you want to do this exactly I recommend using a scale and weighing both the cake rounds to ensure they weigh the same.
  • Place in the oven and bake for 30-35 minutes. To ensure it is cooked, insert a toothpick into the center of the cake and if it comes out clean it's done, if not return to oven for another 5 minutes.
  • While the cake batter is in the oven, add coconut cream only (no water at all) and maple syrup to a bowl and whisk until well combined and smooth. No need to whip the cream, just smooth out a little.
  • Peel pineapple and cut into small pieces leaving out the hard center and only chopping the yellow flesh.
  • Once cake batter is cooked, remove from oven, use an icing spatula or anything very thin and flat like and unsharp knife for example to go around the cake to remove from round's sides and turn onto a cooling rack. Since the cake round was lined with parchment paper it should come out easily so make sure you do it fast to avoid from braking.
  • Let cool completely.
  • Put one layer of cake onto your cake stand, spoon a big dollop of maple sweetened coconut cream on it and spread with an icing spatula or large knife.
  • Now add a layer of cut up pineapple and then another thin layer of coconut cream to fill in the holes.
  • Place the second layer of cake on top and then ice with the rest of the coconut cream until achieving a naked cake design, spreading evenly on the top and filling in holes on the sides but leaving the cooked cake batter exposed.
  • Top with extra cut up pineapple for decoration and pour maple syrup on the top until it starts dripping down the sides. Enjoy!

Notes

* Where I live they sell already separated coconut cream. If you cannot find cans of coconut cream buy regular full fat coconut milk, place in the fridge over night, open can carefully without shaking and spoon out the cream that has formed on the top saving the coconut water at the bottom for something else.

More Summer Fruit Recipes

Gluten-Free Peach Cobbler – This easy, Southern-style peach cobbler is one my favorite summer desserts. Cinnamon, vanilla, & heaps of fresh peaches meld beautifully with the buttery, sweet topping.

It’s easy to make, too. I can easily throw it together in a pinch for guests when I’m short on time.

Fruit Pizza Recipe – The  cookie crust of this fruit pizza is soft and buttery, yet sturdy enough to pile a lot of fruit on. I’ve also included a recipe for light and fluffy homemade whipped topping.

Cherry almond ice cream -This recipe was a happy accident, and it’s so delicious!

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About Lorena

My name is Lorena and I am…well….many things. I am German Peruvian, I am a researcher, I am a university graduated translator, I am a globetrotter, I am a natural living enthusiast but most of all…I am a mother, a wife, a real food lover and a self-proclaimed cook caring for my family’s health.

Come join me over at Green Healthy Cooking, where I offer real food recipes made out of 95% unprocessed food. Only 95% because let’s be realistic, not all of us have a mill to grind grains and make flour in the kitchen corner or a cow to milk in the entry hall way. So, I’m keeping it real in a real world scenario where all of us have about 39372920 other things on our daily to-do-list after “preparing a healthy meal”. I do keep it as unprocessed as possible though. The more you make from scratch the healthier you will be and the better you will feel.

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About HEATHER

Heather is a holistic health educator, herbalist, DIYer, Lyme and mold warrior. Since founding Mommypotamus.com in 2009, Heather has been taking complicated health research and making it easy to understand. She shares tested natural recipes and herbal remedies with millions of naturally minded mamas around the world. 

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Recipe Rating




30 thoughts on “Coconut Cream Cake Recipe”

  1. This looks amazing! Sounds amazing too! With a 2 yr old that has eczema issues and a 5 yr old with tummy issues this would totally work for them (and looks/sounds to please the rest of our children and ourselves!) Do you take orders and deliver? Just kidding! Will have to try this soon!

    Reply
    • Hi Marcie,
      I can’t say if this substitution would work for this particular recipe since I haven’t made it, but usually, you can sub brown rice flour for quinoa flour. 7/8 cup brown rice flour is equal to 1 cup quinoa flour. That’s what I’m going to try if I ever get the chance to make this. Quinoa doesn’t work well with me either. Hope that helps!

      Reply
    • I’m not sure what would be the best substitution. Brown rice flour might work but I’m guessing it would become a lot denser. Maybe just make it a whole almond flour cake?

      Reply
  2. Maple syrup is one of my favorite things- ever, so I am sure it tastes amazing in this recipe. I used to live where the good stuff was pretty inexpensive, but now, it’s crazy pricey for me. Have you tried this recipe with anything else, or is there another ingredient that would work with this flavor combination/formula?

    Reply
    • Coconut sugar has a similar taste to Maple Syrup. If you have a good blender/food processor you could make it into powdered sugar (I’ve made icing this way) or you could dissolve it in just enough hot water to make a very thick simple syrup.

      Reply
  3. Sounds delicious! I’ll try it! If I use coconut milk to get my coconut cream, should I use 3 cans instead of two that are pure cream? Thanks ?

    Reply
    • I would say it depends on the brand. I’ve bought brands that have just as much coconut cream in them than a can labelled “coconut cream”. Try to get 2 cups of coconut cream. I don’t know if they sell the “Thai” brand where you live but where I live they do and I found that those are the ones that have the most cream in them.

      Reply
  4. How do you think this would work with egg substitute (like flax or chia goo)? Or with duck eggs (how many)? Our daughter can’t eat chicken eggs which is limiting with gluten free baking. It looks scrumptious! Thanks in advance for your thoughts on egg subs.

    Reply
    • Usually I use sunflowers to substitute almonds in any nut-free recipe but in this case I’m not exactly sure if that would work. I’ve never made sunflower seed flour and I’ve never seen it anywhere. Maybe make 1/4 of the recipe in form of a muffin first to see how the flour reacts and if the consistency is great go for the whole recipe 🙂

      Reply
  5. Is possible to bake all the batter in one cake round and cut it in two pieces once it is baked. I wonder what would be the baking time in this case.
    Thank you!

    Reply
    • Hi Raya, you could do that “in theory”. I can’t tell you the baking time. You would have to start with I’d say 45 minutes and then poke a wooden stick into the middle. If it comes out clean the cake is done, if it comes out with batter, leave it in the oven for another 5-10 minutes and repeat this step. Cutting the cake in half will be very messy. If you only have one round I recommend cooking one after the other. I’ve done this before as well when I only had one. It’s only 30 more minutes and will save you all the cleaning time you added because of crumbs everywhere and possibly a cake broken in two.

      Reply
  6. This recipe doesn’t make sense. It has maple syrup listed three different times in different amounts. Which is for the frosting and which is for the cake? And what is the third listing of maple syrup for?

    Reply
  7. Made this for my kiddos 10th birthday and all the party-goers loved it! We are talking 6 10 year olds cleaning their plates!
    I found I needed a lot more coconut cream than 2 cups to properly cover the cake (even with the side cake exposed)
    Thank you so much for this recipe – this is the first cake my gluten-free, dairy-free husband has been able to enjoy in two years!

    Reply
  8. We have to go egg free in our household due to allergies. Some recipes like this can’t withstand an egg replacement, do you think flax eggs would work with this one?

    Reply
  9. This cake looks absolutely amazing!!
    I’m attempting to make this today, only to realise I’ve bought almond meal instead of almond flour.. still going to give it a go, just worried it maybe slightly more heavy.. ?

    Reply