This recipe is dedicated to those people who say that they’ll never buy feijoas (or lemons) because they grew up with a fruit tree in their backyard and the idea of paying for fruit is incomprehensible, yet their current backyard is bare of such trees. Having never been blessed with my own feijoa tree I can quite happily shell out for any number of feijoas. And I do.

By whatever means you have filled your fruit bowl with feijoas, this cake is one of the best ways to make their most of their short season. Aside from the fairly immense joy you’ll experience eating these loaf cakes, the other benefit is the gorgeous smell that will fill your house as they bake.

This recipe makes a lot of cake: two large loaf cakes or one large loaf and eight mini loaves, or a shit tonne of mini loaves. 

Feijoa & coconut loaf cakes

From Susan Fleischl, A Treasury of of New Zealand Baking, 2009

For the cakes:

460g gluten-free or plain flour 

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda 

a large pinch of salt

3 free-range eggs 

300g caster sugar

330ml flavourless oil, such as rice bran

1 teaspoon vanilla paste 

125ml buttermilk

1 & 1/2 cups feijoa pulp, scooped out of their skins and mashed

70g long thread coconut 

Preheat oven to 170°C. Line the loaf tins and grease the mini loaf tins/muffin tins really well. 

Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into your largest mixing bowl. In a separate bowl whisk together the eggs, sugar, oil, buttermilk, and vanilla until smooth. Pour into the dry ingredients and gently fold together. Fold through the feijoas and coconut. Pour the batter into your prepared tins.

The mini loaf cakes will take about 20 minutes to bake; the larger loaves 30 – 40 minutes (starting checking from 30 minutes). Insert a skewer into the centre of the loaves to test if they are baked; the skewer should come out mostly clean with just a few crumbs sticking to it. Cool in the tins for 10 minutes before turning out. These cakes keep really well.

For the glaze:

1 & 1/2 cups icing sugar

juice and zest of a lemon or lime 

To glaze the loaves, measure out approximately 1 1/2 cups icing sugar into a bowl and add the juice of a half a lemon. Mix to a thick paste which will slowly dribble off a spoon. when lifted up. Wait until the cakes have almost cooled completely before icing.