I love this cake.  I made it back in January for my daughter’s birthday party and all the moms loved.  So, when I had an opportunity to bring a dessert to a meeting, I chose to make this cake again.  And I decided to make two cakes, one to serve and one to freeze for another occasion.  This recipe for Coconut Tea Cake is found in Dorie Greenspan’s Baking from My Home to Yours, pages 194-195.

Since I like to stretch myself, I decided to add some fresh pineapple to one of the cakes.  I read an article last year in Cooks Illustrated about how to make a great peach cake.  The key was to cook the cut up peach pieces in the oven to remove a lot of the juice. Then you roll the pieces in panko crumbs.  All of this is to insure that the peaches do not add too much moisture to the cake.  I used this same technique with the pineapples.

I cut up 1/8 of a fresh pineapple into small diced pieces.  These I spread the pieces out on a parchment covered baking sheet and then cooked them in a preheated 325 degree oven for about 20 minutes.  By this time, some of the pieces were slightly browned, but most of them had shrunk and were less juicy.  Once cooled, I rolled the pieces in panko crumbs.  Then I added them to the batter right before filling the cake pans.

Cake pans

I used two different pans.  One is a standard Bundt cake pan.  The second is from my grandmother and I don’t know if it has a name.  They both made beautiful cakes.  While I know bundt cakes are usually made and then flipped on a plate, this cake rises and hardens at the top making the flipping part not attractive.

Grandmom's pan with the regular coconut cake

Bundt pan with pineapple coconut cake

Both cakes came out beautifully.  The only one we tasted was the one with pineapples. It was delicious.  The prep work I did on the pineapples was well worth it.  The cake had a pineapple taste, but was not wet from too much pineapple juice.  I loved it.

The other cake is in the freezer waiting for an occasion to be eaten.  I am sure that will be soon.