Feijoa coconut caramel cake

My mind was truly blown last weekend. I was reading up about feijoas, preparing to bake with them for the first time this season, and I came across the name 'pineapple guava'... Never in my life had I ever heard feijoas called pineapple gauvas. But apparently, in some small strange part of the world (no offence!), that's what they are known as - fun feijoa fact.

I LOVE FEIJOAS. I've heard they're polarising, you either love them or you hate them, but as a lover of feijoas, I just can't believe that's true. When feijoa season rolls around in early autumn, I'm over-excited, raring to go, and desperate to find a fresh fix. One of our old houses was surrounding by feijoa trees and I really did get to the point where I ran out of uses for them. But in my current house in the middle of the city, that is not situation I have to deal with as I have NO access to free feijoas. 'It's a sad sad situation' - as Elton John once wrote (about his lack of access to free, fresh feijoas, probably...!).

This feijoa coconut cake is an absolute STAR of a recipe. It's so easy, it really does just take minutes to throw together. So next time you are lucky enough to have a glut of feijoas, and you're at your wit's end trying to think of something to do with them... Make this cake!!

Try this:

Ingredients for cake

250gm plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

50gm coconut thread

1 tsp salt

3 eggs

220gm caster sugar

60gm butter, melted

200ml milk

1 tsp vanilla paste

3 large feijoas, peeled and chopped into small chunks

Ingredients for topping

120gm butter

50ml milk

180gm brown sugar

100gm coconut thread

3 large feijoas, peeled and thinly sliced

Method

Heat oven to 170c. Line an 8-9in cake tin with baking paper, and spray with oil or grease with butter. In a bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, coconut and salt, and set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs and caster sugar together until thick, creamy and slightly lighter in colour. Add the vanilla, the cool melted butter, and the milk and whisk until fully incorporated. Add the flour mixture and give a quick whisk until all the flour is just incorporated - don't go crazy! Then gently fold through the chopped feijoas, and pour out the mixture into the lined cake tin.

Pop the tin into the oven and set a timer for 20 minutes. While the cake bakes, prepare the topping. In a pot, gently heat the second measurement of butter and milk, and the brown sugar. Once it starts to boil, give it a minute or so to thicken up and caramelise a little, then take it off the heat and stir in the coconut.

When the cake is done with it's 20 minutes of cooking, take it out carefully and quickly arrange the sliced feijoas evenly over the top in a single layer - you'll need to work quickly so the cake is out of the oven for the least possible time. Then pour the caramel coconut mix over the top of the feijoa layer, gently spreading it out to the edges of the cake with a spatula if you need to. Pop it back into the oven for another 15-20 minutes. The cake is done when the caramel is starting to harden on the outside edges but is still soft and runny in the middle.

Leave the cake to cool in the tin for 15 minutes, which gives the caramel time to set before you turn it out onto a wire rack to cook completely. Dust with icing sugar, slice and devour! Keep the cake in an airtight container.

Top feijoa tip - once peeled and/or sliced they start to brown very quickly, which can make them a bit unsightly (even though they still taste just the same). If you're chopping or slicing them ready to use in the cake, just squeeze half a lemon over them and give them a gentle stir round. The acid in the lemon stops the fruit from browning so quickly.