Coconut Coffeecake with Chocolate Chunks
Servings: 8 -12
Ingredients
- 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 1/2 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 1/8 teaspoon of almond extract to the batter!
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 1/2 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 1/8 teaspoon of almond extract to the batter!