Coconut mini-volcanoes – brazilian cakes (light and funny)

Coconut mini-volcanoes - brazilian cakes (light and funny)

This is not a recipe of mine, i took this recipe from Fernanda’s blog Sabor Brasil.
The original cake is this: Bolo gostoso com cobertura de coco, if you look at the photos you can see that the result is totally different, i took a cake and turned it into little and funny volcanoes.
I think that the best way to pay homage to a recipe is to give your interpretation, so i’m giving mine!
I promised myself to not change too much this brazilian cake, but i could not resist.
i added lemon and vanilla, to adapt it to the italian taste, i changed butter with margarine, i put only two eggs instead of three.
ok, i must admit, i changed a lot of things, also the shape, thing that made this little cakes really funny!
i used little bundt moulds with a flat top (a sort of sweet crater), where i put the coconut, they really look like mini-volcanoes which erupt white and delicious lava.
the biggest change that i made from the original recipe is probably the coconut covering. i reduced the quantity of milk and increased the quantity of coconut so the mixture could be wet but not too much. the original recipe suggested to serve the cake inside of a baking pan because the cake should be really wet. this is of course wasn’t possibile with pastries, that’s why i changed the covering.
i really liked this mini-vulcanoes. they have a different shape from the classic muffin/donuts/bundt cakes, and they also have an interesting taste. the cake itself is soft and light (only 50 gr of butter or margarina for 18 brazilian cakes) , the filling is sweet, mellow and crunchy at the same time.

Cathedral shaped cake with multicolor top

Cathedral shaped cake with multicolor top

I made the cathedral shaped cake for my best friend’s birthday.
I wanted to do something different, and I’m not a cake-design’s fan. So decorated cakes were not an option.
I had this fantastic cake mould by Silikomart which is an italian factory specialized in silicone moulds, but you can easily find something similar by Nordic ware (even if in aluminun or some kind of metal).
It has the shape of a cathedral, really weird shape for a cake, but i like weird stuff!
So i did this cake, with a quite normal buttery base ( i already tried this before to know if it fitted with the mould), the added the mixed berries to the dough.
And a little magic happened…also helped by luck.
The chance wanted that the mixed berries were so sour that i had to cut them in the middle and add some sugar. It was this little trick that turned the cake into something fantastic and spectacular.
The berries thanks to gravity force did sink in the dough and when i turned the cake upside down they were shining on the surface, in all their splendour.
The sugar I added did candy them, so they were lucid, bright and full of colours.
The cathedral cake looked like a multicolor painting. I did whisper “ohhhhh” when I pulled it out the mould.