This gluten free coconut cake is everything you know a coconut cake should be: it’s light, soft, sweet, full of coconut flavor, and has a nice tender crumb!
Sometimes I feel like writing and sometimes I don’t.
Today I don’t.
So I probably shouldn’t, because I’ll end up writing something really weird about aliens or extinct mammoths, and then I’ll come back here later and look at it and wonder how I even started thinking about extinct mammoths.
So instead, I’m going to let this gluten free coconut cake speak for itself. It is light and fluffy and moist and sweet and delicate and the coconut inside of it adds a nice crunch.
There you have it.
So go make yourself some gluten-free coconut cake. This is something you NEED to do.
- ¾ cup rice flour
- ¾ cup cornstarch, tapioca starch, or potato starch
- 2 tablespoons coconut flour
- 1 teaspoon guar gum
- ¼ cup sugar (for refined sugar free version skip the sugar and add ¼ cup more honey instead)
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ cup honey
- ¼ cup coconut oil (not coconut butter)
- ¼ cup butter (note: For dairy free version use coconut butter or olive oil)
- 1 large egg
- 1 cup coconut milk (from the carton, not the can)
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 3 tablespoons sour cream (for dairy free version use mayonnaise)
- 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- ½ cup coconut, lightly toasted (see below recipe for how to toast coconut)
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Grease two 8 inch springform cake pans.
- Combine the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl (rice flour, cornstarch, coconut flour, guar gum, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda). Set aside.
- Melt the honey, coconut oil, and butter together in a small saucepan on medium low heat or in the microwave.
- While the honey/oil/butter is melting, use your electric mixer to blend together the egg, coconut milk, vanilla extract, sour cream, and apple cider vinegar.
- Add the melted honey, coconut oil, and butter. Beat until combined.
- Add the dry ingredients and the lightly toasted coconut. Stir until just combined.
- Divide the batter evenly between the two cake pans.
- Bake for 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Cool the cakes completely before frosting. See below recipe for frosting options.
- Sprinkle with more toasted coconut.
- Best served the day it is baked, but you can serve it the next day.
For frosting, I used my Chocolate Buttercream Frosting, but you could also use this Basic Cream Cheese Frosting.
For instructions on how to toast coconut, visit this page.
Hi this cake looks good and all the ingredients sounds good also except you have suggested mayonnaise for sour cream replacement. Mayonnaise is dairy also. Have you tried a coconut yoghurt or some other dairy free alternative?
Hey there Reena! Mayonnaise doesn’t necessarily contain dairy. I actually have a homemade mayo recipe (contains apple cider vinegar, eggs, olive oil, salt, and pepper). I hope this works for you! Let me know if you make the cake & how it turns out. 🙂
Could you suggest anything else instead of guar gum as I can’t find it here:D
Yes, I can! In this cake you could replace the guar gum with 1:1 xanthan gum or 1:2 gelatin (half as much gelatin as you’d use guar or xanthan gum). Hope that helps!
Hi there! I made this cake once and my family loved it! I was wanting to make it again but was wondering if it would make well as cupcakes? Thanks for your input!:-)
Hey Tiffany,
Yes, you can definitely make this as cupcakes! Just do a shorter cooking time (maybe shave off 5-10 minutes)!