Coconut Lemon Bundt Cake

My first food blog post from our new apartment! However I still have some things I made from before so I'll be posting about those first. I'm just really happy that our internet is working AND the new monitor is working. Not sure how long it will be working for though as it seems to be kind of busted. I'm going away this weekend for a wedding and I'm feeling some food blog separation anxiety. But I'm looking forward to having more time for food blog things next week. Anyway, now let's talk about food.

I was all set to make the maple pancake loaf from Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More and I'd chopped up the nuts, then went looking for the maple syrup. No maple syrup? Baking tragedy. So I quickly scanned through a few cookbooks and came across this lemon coconut bundt cake. Thankfully lemons and coconut are something I always have on hand, and coconut is one of my favourite things so it seemed like an okay consolation baked good. Well it turned out to be more than that! The smell of it baking made me so eager for them to come out of the oven. Oh and this was the first that I used my mini bundt pans. Suffice it to say, you are not suppose to completely fill the bundt pans. Yes I should know this from making muffins and cakes but when I have more batter than baking pan, I usually end up putting it all in there and hoping it doesn't explode over the sides (and it always does and I always freak out a bit. Maybe one day I'll learn.) So we can call these bundt cakes lemon coconut flying saucers. As it turned out, the explodey parts were delicious because they got hard like really delicious muffin tops.

Lemon and coconut are really such a great pairing, and they were perfectly balanced in this bundt. The cakes were so moist, oh and did I mention that they're vegan? I want to experiment more with vegan baking. So far all of my healthy muffins are vegan, but I haven't tried much beyond that. Well as many vegan bakers out there will not be surprised to hear, these bundt cakes far surpassed many non vegan baked goods. The only unfortunate thing was that they were a bit oily - not that that stopped me from eating them. I bet these would be delicious with white chocolate. The perfect summer afternoon snack!

David Lebovitz was saying on his blog about how you shouldn't zest a lemon onto a plate and then carefully measure it out by putting it into a measuring spoon. Instead you should not worry about exact measurements and just zest directly into whatever it's being mixed into so you don't lose the precious lemon/citrus oil. That's what I tried this time and I have no idea if it really made a difference but the bundt cakes were tasty.

If this sounds good, you might also like:
Matcha Coconut Madeleines
Lemon Poppyseed Muffins
Chocolate Oatmeal Coconut Cookies
bill's Coconut Bread

Coconut Lemon Bundt Cake
Slightly adapted from Veganomicon

You can make one 8" or 10" bundt cake, about 12 mini bundt cakes, or 15 muffins. (These are my guesses, except for the large bundt cake, because for me it made 6 muffins and 6 mini bundt cakes.)

Wet
1 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cup canola oil
14 oz (400 mL) can coconut milk
1/4 cup soy milk
1/4 cup lemon juice
zest of 2 lemons
2 tsp vanilla extract

Dry
3 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups shredded unsweetened coconut

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease whatever kind of baking pan you're using (bundt pan, muffin tin).

In a large mixing bowl, combine the wet ingredients. Stir to combine.

In another bowl, mix the dry ingredients (not including the coconut). Mix the dry ingredients into the wet in batches, mixing well after each addition. Fold in the coconut.

Pour the batter into the baking pan(s). Bake for 1 hour (check at 30 minutes if using smaller baking pans), or until knife inserted in cake comes out clean. When you remove them from the oven, let the cakes cool on a rack for 10 minutes before flipping the cakes out.