Jackfruit and Coconut Cake
January 25, 2025 • Breads, Desserts,
It’s incredible to live in a tropical place. Ever since we bought our winter home in Puerto Rico, our friends seem to constantly shower us with food from their small backyard fincas. We’ve been gifted papayas, quenepas, plantains, bananas, eggs, coconut water, and, most recently, a jackfruit.
If you’ve never worked with jackfruit, you’re in for a surprise, as in it’s a surprisingly difficult fruit to harvest. You have to cut through the massive tough shell, then spend a tedious amount of time pulling out the pods which are the actual fruit, and removing the large seeds from each pod. But the fruit and the seeds have a ton of health benefits, so it’s worth the effort.
One typical sized jackfruit yielded this massive harvest of pods and a hefty 2-3 cups of seeds which I turned into hummus (recipe up next). The fruit is far more than we could eat at once, so I portioned it into small containers, gifted some to my neighbors, and froze a few containers to use later.
First up was this lovely cake where the jackfruit plays a role similar to carrots in carrot cake. It’s sweet, but just barely, and firm enough to bake up nicely in the cake. I used a rum-powdered sugar glaze, but you can simply use water or milk to make a powdered sugar glaze or you can skip that entirely. I’m serving this for dessert tonight to the couple who gifted us the jackfruit, and I’m hoping they love it!
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- ¾ cup avocado oil
- 4 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 cups chopped fresh jackfruit pods
- ⅔ cup unsweetened coconut flakes, divided
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon coconut washed or plain rum (or water/milk)
- Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and ginger in a medium bowl and mix with a spoon.
- In a separate bowl, combine the oil, eggs, vanilla and sugar and mix until well combined. Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture, and stir just until combined. Gently stir in the jackfruit and ½ cup of the coconut flakes.
- Grease a bundt pan (or 3 small loaf pans like I used) and our the batter in the pan(s). Bake at 350 degrees until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about an hour. Let cool completely before removing the cake from the pan(s).
- Combine the powdered sugar and rum, adding a bit more sugar or rum as necessary to get a glaze texture that isn't too runny, then drizzle over the top of the cake. Sprinkle the remaining coconut on top of the glaze.