​From the Monday Morning Cooking Club comes this moist Chocolate Coconut Milk Cake, a much loved Jewish recipe shared in Now For Something Sweet.

Lisa Goldberg, Natanya Eskin, Jacqui Isreal and Merelyn Frank Chalmers cook from the heart. Their mission is to uncover, curate, honour and celebrate the best, treasured, and most delicious sweet recipes from Australia’s Jewish community and from around the world.

Monday Morning Cooking Club members Lisa Goldberg, Natanya Eskin, Jacqui Isreal and Merelyn Frank Chalmers.

“We are always dreaming of soft, airy, pale chiffon cake, thinking about chocolate-swirled, glossy yeasted babke, imagining flaky, chewy, jammy strudel, baking almond-studded, citrus-glazed Dutch buns, frying golden, syrup-drenched coiled fishuelas, biting into hot, sugared jam-filled doughnuts, eating crisp-shelled, marshmallowy vanilla-flecked meringues, feasting on sticky, steaming, sweet butterscotch pudding and sharing it all with abundance and love.’

Oh my, if you are not hungry for a sweet treat after reading that I am surprised!

However, this is about more than just cooking. Alongside the recipes, they tell heart-warming and poignant stories of survival, loss, love, family and community.

The women from Sydney’s Jewish community came together as friends every Monday morning to cook their favourite recipes and talk about food. For them, it is all about sharing community recipes and stories, inspiring others to preserve their methods, and giving the book profits to charity.

 

You’ll drool over Now For Something Sweet

Now For Something Sweet is their second book. The first book, The Monday Morning Cooking Club, was published in April 2011.

The Monday Morning Cooking Club is a not-for-profit group, and all profits from book sales go to charity.

​

Chocolate Coconut Milk Cake

This moist chocolate cake serves about 10 people.

Ingredients

  • 55 g (2 oz) dark chocolate, chopped
  • 85 g (⅔ cup/3 oz) unsweetened Dutch cocoa powder, sifted
  • 185 ml (¾ cup/6 fl oz) hot brewed coffee
  • 150 g (1 cup/5⅓ oz) plain (all-purpose) flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon bicarb soda (baking soda)
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 230 g (1 cup/8 oz) caster (superfine) sugar
  • 50 g (¼ cup/1¾ oz) dark muscovado or brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 90 g (3¼ oz) coconut oil, melted, or 5 tablespoons (3½ fl oz) oil
  • 275 ml (1 cup + 5 teaspoons/9⅓ fl oz) coconut milk

 

COCONUT GANACHE ICING

Ingredients

  • 125 g (4¼ oz) dark chocolate, chopped
  • 125 ml (½ cup/4¼ fl oz) coconut milk
  • 1 teaspoon light corn syrup (optional)

ALSO NEEDED

  • coconut flakes, toasted

​Photo by Charisse Kenion on Unsplash

How to make this moist chocolate coconut milk cake

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4). Line the base and sides of a 24 cm (9½ inch) springform cake tin. Shake the tin of coconut milk well and divide it into the amounts for the cake and icing.

2. To make the cake, place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl with the cocoa powder. Pour over the hot coffee and allow to stand for a couple of minutes, then whisk by hand until the mixture is smooth. Set aside.

3.  Sift together the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt, then set aside. Using an electric mixer, combine the caster and muscovado sugar and the eggs. Whisk until pale and thick. Add the coconut oil or oil and whisk again until well combined.

4. Add melted chocolate and the cake coconut milk for the cake. Continue to mix on low speed and scraping down the sides as needed, until the mixture is smooth. The add the dry ingredients and whisk on low speed until just incorporated.

5. Pour the batter into the prepared tin. Bake in the bottom third of the oven for 50 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Place on a wire rack and allow to cool before removing from the tin

6. Make the icing when the cake has completely cooled. Place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Then heat the coconut milk with the corn syrup (if using) in a small saucepan until it just comes to the boil. Pour over the chocolate. Leave for the icing two minutes and then stir until it is smooth and shiny.

7. Allow the icing to cool for 10 minutes before pouring over the cake. Sprinkle with the toasted coconut.

 

More chocolate  recipes

A slice of moist chocolate cake is a little bit of heaven for me. If you like this Chocolate Coconut Milk Cake from the Monday Morning Cooking Club and published in Now For Something Sweet, you might also like these other chocolate recipes.

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