Rummy coconut cake with a cream-cheese lime icing

Although I'm not a massive baker and probably never will be for the simple reason that I prefer savoury food, now and again baking can be really fun. Especially making up your unusual flavour combinations, I love that. Today, I was in a Caribbean mood so the cake was coconut with lime icing washed down with ginger beer cocktails. I will tell you all about the cocktails next time. Today is about the seriously boozy cake I made for my friend Anja's birthday. It's a semi-healthy one, having replaced normal sugar with coconut sugar. I was going to replace the butter with coconut oil, but in the end I got a bit nervous about that and settled on the normal stuff in the mixture, greasing the tin with coconut oil

 

First, pour the rum over the dessicated coconut to soften it. Melt the butter in a pan on a low heat, then add the sugar and turn the heat off. Beat the two together until they reach a creamy consistency. Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence, then start cracking the eggs in. Between each egg add a tablespoon of flour and keep blending. Add the rest of the flour, keep stirring until you get a smooth paste at which point add the rum-soaked coconut. Bake this in a pre-heated over for 45min, on about 180C. Time for the icing: blend the cream cheese, icing sugar, lime juice and remaining vanilla essence until it has the right consistency - I'm sure you know what I mean by that. Once the cake has cooled, ice it and grate some lime zest over the top. It's pretty damn good, especially with the Caribbean-style cocktails I'll blog about in a couple of days. As I don't own a set of scales, the measurements down there are all approximates

250g plain flour, sifted
250g slightly salted butter
4 eggs
250g coconut sugar
200g dessicated coconut
100ml of spiced rum
2 teaspoons of good quality vanilla essence 
200g cream cheese
Juice of 1 lime
100g icing sugar
lime rind to decorate