Best of 2024: Nici Wickes' Sticky Coconut Feijoa Cake

This sticky cake is studded with tangy feijoas and has a chewy caramelised coconut topping added halfway through cooking and it’s just gorgeous. 

Makes a 23cm cake. 

 

Ingredients 

1 cup pitted dates 

1 cup boiling water 

1 teaspoon baking soda 

130g butter 

½ cup white sugar 

½ cup brown sugar 

1 large egg 

1 ¼ cups plain flour 

1 teaspoon baking powder 

Pinch salt 

½ cup dessicated coconut 

1 cup peeled and diced feijoa 

 

Coconut topping: 

1 cup shredded coconut 

1/3 cup brown sugar 

1/3 cup milk 

50g butter 

 

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 170 C. Grease and line a 23cm round baking tin.

2. Cover dates in boiling water and leave to soak for 5 minutes then add baking soda and blend to a chunky paste in a food processor.

3. Cream the butter and both sugars until pale and creamy then beat in the egg and beat for one minute more. Add the date paste to the creamed mixture and stir until combined. Sift in flour, baking powder and salt. Fold in coconut and feijoa chunks until combined. Scrape into baking tin, gently smooth the top and bake for 30 minutes. While it cooks make the coconut topping by combining all ingredients in a small pot over a low heat until melted together.

4. At 30 minute mark, gently spoon the coconut topping over the cake, in an even layer. Continue to cook for a further 25-35 minutes until topping is golden brown and a skewer inserted comes out clean. Run a knife around the edge of the cake to loosen the topping from the tin and leave for one hour before gently turning out and cooling fully.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from Newstalks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Fourteen to ten on Newstalks EDB. Yes, I enjoyed Mister
Bates Versus The Post Office. Another show I absolutely love
has just come back with a new series. It's Alone.
This is the amazing reality TV show where they get
kind of survival experts. They drop them in the middle
of nowhere and those people have to set up a camp,
hunt for food, try and last as long as they

(00:35):
can in the wilderness while filming themselves. So they have
basically no human contact and depending on how long they last,
they can then access a satellite phone and call for
help and basically it's last person standing wins. Anyway, the
reason I'm excited about Alone is because the latest season
is set in New Zealand. It's Australian competitors, but they

(00:57):
are all set up in a part of Fjordland around
a massive lake there trying to eke out, you know,
eake out of life for as long as they can.
And so we're going to tell you more about Alone
in the latest series after ten of Cootle This Morning
in our screen time segment right now. Though it's thirteen
to ten and time to catch up with our cook,
Nikki Wicks more than a Nikki.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
Yeah, good morning chat.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
It is officially Fijo a season. I mean it's been
Fijo a season for a wee while. But I tell
you what. Last weekend, which I had Easter weekend in Nelson,
of course, as soon as we finished the show, I
went outside and my step son and my nephews were
scurrying around under the fijoa bush. They call themselves rats.
They say, we're being rats and we're getting fijos because

(01:39):
the rats get the fijos. So they're like, we're being rats.
And they were just going around picking up fijos, biting
into them and eating.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
That was so I mean, such as the abundance of
our beautiful fijo that they are not like any other
fruits in New Zealand. Yeah, they are that abundance that
no one cares how many you eat. There's not a
parental figure going, not too many of those kids yet
you know. Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it. Hey, Look, before
I go into this absolutely incredible cake recipe I've got,

(02:07):
I wanted to read a little excerpt from the book
by Kate Evans called a story of obsession and the
longing feed jo and you, I think interviewed.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Well, here we go.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
The scent comes first. When you sink your knife in
or your teeth into a feed Joe's skin, it is zingy, heady,
a burst of bright, perfumed flavor unlike any other. In
New Zealand, the traditional method is to scoop out the creamy,
clear insides with a d spoon and discard the skins,
though in many other parts of the world people simply

(02:41):
eat them whole, and the scent of the flesh is
translucent and jelly like. Where the tiny seeds hang in
spiral suspension. Closer to the skin, it's it's opaque and
slightly gritty. Some have compared the taste to a mixture
of pineapple and strawberries, but in reality the flavor is
something all of its own. In the United States, where
joe as are called pineapple guavas, a nineteen twelve newspaper

(03:05):
article declared, he who drinks beer thinks beer, but he
who eats pineapple guava thinks of pineapple, raspberries, and banana.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
All at once.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Isn't that lovely?

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Isn't it?

Speaker 3 (03:18):
So true, isn't it? I absolutely love it so lot.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
There you go. Problem with if there is one, is
that they tend to all come at once.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yes they do.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
And so finding some utilitarian purposes for them, finding some
uses outside of eating them like rats, can be a
bit tricky, but you're solving that problem for us today.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
I am with a beautiful, beautiful coconut. This is a
sticky fijo a cake. It's got lots of coconuts, got dates,
and it's beautiful. So to go, cup of cup of
pitted dates. You first of all, you cover those with
boiling water. That's to soak them so that they're ready.
And I add a little bit of baking soda to that.
So I got a cover of dates, cover boiling water,
and a teaspoon of baking soda, which sort of helps

(03:56):
them kind of soften a little bit too and adds
to our cake cries later on. And so I led
them to soak for five minutes and then blend all
of that up to a chunky paste in a food process,
so water and all jack, you don't have to drain
that water off. And then we'll cream some butter and sugars.
So that sort of cake. We've got one hundred and
thirty grams of butter, half a cup of white sugar,

(04:17):
half a cup of brown sugar. So it's a pretty
sweet cake because it's got the dates and the sugar
in there. Add the date paste into thereafter you've creamed
it and beaten an egg, one lovely large egg, and
stir all of that until it's combined, and then sift
in one and a quarter cups of plain flour with
a teaspoon of baking powder and a little pinch of
salt if you like, in there too, and then fold

(04:38):
in half a cup of dessicated coconut and a cup
of peeled and diced feed soa. It can probably handle
more feed joa too, if you really have got heaps
of them. Yeah, it's really beautiful. It's great. So gently,
so you know, mix all of that together until it's
just combined. Scrape it into I use a twenty three
centimeter around baking tin for this ovens on one seventy

(05:00):
so bake, so scrape that into them just gently, kind
of smooth the top because it's a thick little batter,
and bake it for thirty minutes. But that's not all
while that's baking in a pot, make a little coconut
topping for it with a cup of shredded coconut, or
you could use the desiccated the game, but maybe use
a little bit less third of a cup of brown sugar,

(05:21):
third of a cup of milk, and fifty grams of
butter and just mix all of that together until it's
kind of heated, you know, and melted. And then at
the thirty minute mark of your cake jack just you
know it's done, its little rise to gently spoon this
coconut topping all over the cake and then bake it
for another twenty five to three five minutes until something

(05:41):
comes until a skewer or a knife comes out nice
and clean, and that will go all sort of golden
and not really crunchy, but all it's beautiful and sticky.
When it comes time to take the cake out, run
that knife around the edge of the cake to loosen
it whilst it's in the tin, and before you've rested it,
just to loosen that sort of camel's topping. Leave it
for a good hour to sort of you know, call down.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
And then it's always the hardest bit for me, for
goodness sake.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
Well, it'll collapse because it's such a beautiful it'll collapse
and it's only got one egg.

Speaker 2 (06:14):
Yeah, it's beautiful.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Great thing to do with you, Jr. I'd strongly recommend us.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
Fantastic. Hey, what we will do is make sure that
recipe is up and available on the news talks HEB
website very soon indeed, so that everyone can make it
at home this weekend. You have a great weekend, one Niniki,
you too.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to news Talks he'd be from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio