1 ¾ cups whole spelt flour, whole wheat pastry flour or all-purpose flour*
2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature (use Earth Balance to make this dairy-free)
¾ cup pure grade A maple syrup or cane sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk (I like Native Forest and Natural Value, which are BPA-free)
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate bars, broken into ½-inch irregular pieces, divided (or you can buy chocolate pieces)
½ cup unsweetened flaked coconut
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease a 9” springform pan** and dust pan with flour, shaking out excess. You can also line the pan with parchment paper if you like.
In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and sea salt. Stir in shredded coconut and set aside.
Using an electric mixer beat butter and maple syrup in a large bowl until combined. It will be lumpy. Add eggs, one a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla.
Add flour mixture to butter mixture in 3 additions alternating with coconut milk in 2 additions, beating just until blended after each addition. Fold in half of the chocolate.
Spread batter evenly in prepared cake pan. Sprinkle remaining chocolate pieces over batter, and then sprinkle with flaked coconut.
Bake cake until golden and tester inserted comes out clean, tenting with sheet of foil if coconut atop cake is browning too quickly, 45-50 minutes.
Transfer cake to rack and cool 45 minutes before removing from pan.
Notes
*For a gluten-free version, use the following in place of the wheat flour: ½ cup sweet rice flour ½ cup brown rice flour 5 Tablespoons potato starch ¼ cup sorghum flour 3 Tablespoons tapioca flour 1 teaspoon xanthan gum
**You can use a regular 9-inch cake pan, but inverting the cake makes a bit of a mess with the coconut. Just a heads-up.
The original recipe called for 2 teaspoons of orange zest, which I thought was a nice touch, but my family didn't like it. If you love coconut and you want this to really taste like a Mounds Bar, you can add a ½ teaspoon coconut extract to the batter which just makes it a little more coconutty. And if you want this to taste like an Almond Joy bar, add a ⅛ teaspoon of almond extract to the batter!
Recipe by Pamela Salzman at https://pamelasalzman.com/spelt-coconut-coffeecake-chocolate-recipe/