Coconut Milk Snack Cake is ideal for after-school snack, coffee breaks, and late night study sessions. Lightly sweet, with a soft, tender texture, this cake is back-to-school fuel!
I didn’t plan on a series of four recipes using coconut milk. The Thai recipe for Coconut Milk Cookies fell into my lap because I am forever intrigued by cookbooks with international cookie recipes. Every culture has baked goods developed to stay fresh as long as possible, and I’m hunting for them all! For those searching the internet for coconut milk recipes, the Coconut Milk Cookies have been very popular. So to meet the demand, I continue to find ways to use this delicious ingredient. The cookies were followed by Coconut Milk Chocolate Chip Pound Cake and Coconut Milk Toffee Blondies. This recipe for Coconut Milk Snack Cake was a lucky fail turned into a win.
As I was working on the recipe for coconut milk blondies, one version looked like a fail when I took it out of the oven. Though beautifully golden with a heavenly smell, the supposed-to-be blondies had risen while baking. The texture was sure to be un-blondie like. I was disappointed, until I tasted this creation. Definitely not blondies, the cake is simultaneously sturdy enough for shipping yet soft and tender, with such a lovely vanilla-coconut flavor, that adding frosting would be a crime.
To mail Coconut Milk Snack Cake in a care package, I recommend baking in a disposable foil pan and wrapping the cake in the pan, uncut. The foil pan provides protection. Leaving the cake uncut, keeps the cake from drying out while shipping.
Coconut Milk Snack Cake was never destined to be a blondie. It’s a delicious, easy to make (no mixer needed), snack cake that compliments a glass of milk or a mug of coffee or tea. With a shelf-life of about 7 days, Coconut Milk Snack Cake can be enjoyed all week as an after-school snack, or shipped to your favorite college student for a sweet start to the semester!
MORE COCONUT MILK RECIPES
Coconut Milk Chocolate Chip Pound Cake
Coconut Milk Snack Cake
Ingredients
- 1 cup canned coconut milk full fat, not low fat
- ¼ cup coconut oil melted
- 2 large eggs
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- ½ tablespoon vanilla extract
- 1 ¼ cup all-purpose flour
- ½ cup unsweetened coconut shredded
- ¾ teaspoon baking powder
- 2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375° F. Grease an 8×8 baking pan (If shipping, use a disposable foil pan.)
- Open the can of coconut milk and combine the contents THOROUGHLY. The thick, heavy fat separates from the thin milk and MUST be recombined before using. This is most easily done in a blender, food processor, or electric mixer, but can also be done with vigorous whisking. When the fat is completely blended with the liquid the consistency should be similar to dairy cream or milk.
- In a large mixing bowl, stir together the homogenized coconut milk, melted coconut oil, eggs, granulated sugar, and vanilla.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, shredded coconut, and baking powder, then add to the liquid mixture. Mix until just combined.
- Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30-40 minutes until the top is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of the pan comes out clean.
- Remove the cake from the oven and allow to cool completely in the pan before cutting or storing. If shipping, leave the cake in the disposable pan and ship uncut.
- When cooled, the cake can be sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar (optional).
- Wrapped well or stored in an airtight container at room temperature, Coconut Milk Snack Cake remains fresh for up to 1 week.
Notes
Nutrition
Colleen Marble
I had 1 cup of leftover coconut milk that I needed to use, so I googled and found this recipe. This was quite good and easy to adapt to handle dietary restrictions. I am GF, so I used GF flour and substituted xylitol for the sugar. While my cake was perhaps a bit more dense and less caramelized (due to my substitutions) than shown in the photo, it was still incredibly tasty and moist. Even the non-GF folks thought it was delicious, and my friend who is gluten/dairy/sugar-free thought it was fantastic and ate two pieces! I didn’t have coconut flakes so I substituted chopped walnuts to make up the volume, and it worked fine. So that made me think that this is an excellent base-cake recipe that can be used in many ways – I’m thinking as a shortcake with fresh fruit, or shredded apple, nuts and cinnamon for a moist apple cake, or dried fruits for a fruit cake … lots of options, in addition to the coconut cake version posted here. Thank you for sharing the recipe! I’ll be adding it to my recipe box.
Wendy Sondov
Hi, Colleen. I am delighted to hear that your dietary adaptations produced such a successful cake! And it sounds like you have a lot more baking plans ahead. 🙂 I suspect that you are right about the gf flour making the cake a bit more dense (my daughter is gf and I’ve baked numerous gf cakes for her) but I do want to mention that even those who used all purpose wheat flour found the cake comes out more dense if it is baked in pan larger than 8″ x 8″. Thank you for leaving your lovely review!!