How to make raspberry, coconut and lemon syrup cake – recipe

My two-year-old is increasingly keen on baking when it’s just us at home and her older sisters are at school – she knows she’ll have the spoon and bowl to scrape out all by herself when the cake goes in the oven.
My local fruit and veg shop had raspberries piled high just at her eye level. She demolished one punnet in her pushchair on the way home; the second was earmarked for a cake. I’ve had a split packet of desiccated coconut sitting in a tub on my shelf at home for more months than I can remember – baking with it seemed a fitting end to this storage annoyance. And the lemon? Simple: lemons make everything better and brighter.

Time for cake! Photograph: Claire Thomson/Guardian

(Serves 6-8)
160g butter
120g caster sugar
2 eggs
100g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
80g desiccated coconut, plus extra to decorate
2 tbsp milk
80g raspberries
For the lemon syrup:
½ lemon, juiced
2tbsp caster sugar

Add the raspberries. Photograph: Claire Thomson/Guardian

Preheat the oven 180C/350F/gas mark four, and line and grease a 900g loaf tin.
Cream together the butter and sugar in bowl with an electric whisk until pale and creamy – this should take a good five minutes of mixing.
Whisk the eggs and, with the beaters running, add a little at a time to the butter and sugar. When you have added half the egg, add a tablespoon of flour to prevent the mixture from curdling.
Add the rest of the egg with the beaters running, then sift in the flour and baking powder and beat briefly with a large spoon.
Stir in the coconut and milk. The mixture should be loose enough to drop off the back of a spoon; if not, add a little more milk.
Spoon half the cake mix into the prepared loaf tin. Spread the raspberries evenly over the surface, then add the remaining cake mix.
Bake for 40-50 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Meanwhile, make the lemon syrup. Put the lemon juice and sugar in a pan and boil rapidly over a high heat for two minutes, until the mixture thickens and turns syrupy.
Take the cake out of the oven, spoon over the syrup and sprinkle over the extra coconut.
Cool on a wire rack before serving.