Recipe and words extracted from Nostrana: Flavours from my Italian kitchen garden by Bri DiMattina
This is one of my mother’s recipes from her café. It’s so simple that I would often make it on a Sunday night when I had nothing baked for school lunches for the upcoming week.
It can be made with equal success without the lemon slice and brown sugar layer, if you want to skip a step, and is also delicious using any other citrus. It really is one of those pantry basics recipes, which take minimal effort, but don’t look that way!
I was generally baking something a day or so later to replace it, as it disappears so quickly, but I learnt to cut the loaf up into slices or squares myself to make it last a little longer (others in the house would cut ‘slices’ that resembled the size of a lamington!).
Lemon Coconut Loaf
Serves 4
Ingredients
2 lemons
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 cups (300g) self-raising flour
1 cup (80g) desiccated coconut
1 cup (220g) sugar
1 cup (250ml) milk
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Preheat the oven to 160°C and line a 20 x 10cm (base measurement) loaf tin with baking paper.
Wash the lemons, then thinly slice one and cut the slices in half.
Finely grate the zest from the other lemon, then squeeze the juice.
Mix the brown sugar and lemon juice together and spread evenly over the base of the loaf tin. Arrange the lemon slices over the sugar mixture, overlapping very slightly as they will shrink a little while baking.
Fold all the remaining ingredients (including lemon zest) together gently, until just combined. Pour the mixture into the loaf tin and spread out to an even layer.
Bake for 1 hour, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
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Try more of Bri’s recipes —
Polenta & Corn Fritters
Zucchini arancini
Bri DiMattina’s Tomato sauce
