You look like you could use a slice of coconut cake…
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A big slice of soft coconut cake… for breakfast!
Yes, coconut cake for breakfast.
Cake so soft and crumbly and sweet, bursting with juicy pineapple and luxurious vanilla… You’ll feel as if you went to bed and woke up in paradise, and then you won’t want breakfast to end!

Above, glazed with coconut milk and Sugar-Free Powdered Sugar.
Brunch time!
This year, I celebrated Easter twice. Emily’s parents drove up on Saturday morning, and she and I hosted a fancy Easter brunch. (Emily is my friend with whom I share a house. I call her my roommate, but luckily we have our own rooms!)
And Emily made mimosas, as well as some non-vegan foods. It was quite a big mess to clean up afterwards. So many dishes…
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Her parents loved the coconut cake and had two slices each, even though there was a ton of other food!
I was originally calling it coconut bread because it’s cooked in a loaf pan, but they said the recipe was so soft and cakey that it was more like a breakfast cake than a bread.
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Coconut Breakfast Cake
(makes 1 large loaf)
- 1 cup spelt or white flour (or this: gluten-free version)
- 1/4 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 2 tsp Ener-g or 2 tbsp ground flax (If you must, you can omit. The loaf just won’t rise as much)
- 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp sugar, unrefined if desired, or xylitol
- 1/8 tsp uncut stevia OR 1/4 cup more sugar
- 2 1/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup (240g) crushed pineapple, drained (You can sub ripe banana)
- 1/2 cup full-fat canned coconut milk (see nutrition link below, for a lower-fat option)
- optional ingredients: chopped macadamia nuts or walnuts, shredded coconut, rum extract
Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine all wet ingredients. In a separate bowl, combine dry and stir well. Mix dry into wet, but don’t overmix. Pour into a greased or sprayed loaf pan, and cook for 35-38 minutes. Let cool at least ten minutes before going around the sides with a knife and removing from loaf pan. As mentioned above, I used a simple glaze of the sugar-free powdered sugar mixed with a little leftover coconut milk. But my absolute favorite way to eat this recipe is spread with coconut butter! Store very loosely covered overnight, or cover with saran wrap and fridge for a few days. This cake/loaf tastes even better the longer it sits, because it keeps getting sweeter! This recipe freezes well.

Have you ever been to Hawaii?
Or any tropical location? We visited Hawaii a lot when I was little, because it was a good connecting point between Japan (where we lived) and the US. My other favorite tropical location is Thailand… one of the best things about these tropical locations is the plethora of tropical fruits, especially coconut! Side note: I also have a tab just for coconut recipes:
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I’m a huge fan of breakfast cake… HUGE! Thing is, I really don’t love coconut all that much. Is that bad? Tell me it’s not. Do you think I could sub in some flaxseed and raisins? That might be a fun little thing to try!
Sure! Sounds good to me! 🙂
Can you please let me know how many servings are in each loaf?? This looks amazing and I’m sure I would eat the whole thing myself!!
Makes 1 loaf, so however you wish to cut it. Like 8-10 servings.
Thank you for the nice recipe.
Holy Yum, yums!!! This looks amazing!!!
Loved loved LOVED this cake!
🙂
I added in the optional walnuts and shredded coconut, and it was absolutely perfect! Thanks, CCK!
Love your recipes! This one sounds so amazing I wish I had time to make some before class right now! Maye I’ll make it for graduation in a few weeks when my fellow coconut lovers come to celebrate (my husband is anti coconut :/ ) One question though, I’m not vegan (thought I’ve begun to really enjoy cooking vegan recipes!) and was wondering about the 2tsp ener-g that you used, in your substitution line next to it one of options for another egg substitute said to use enough for 2 eggs, would this mean I should use 2 real eggs? It seems like a lot of liquid compared to what you used,maybe ener-g should be on my healthy dream grocery list lol
Sorry, I haven’t actually worked with eggs in over ten years so I have no idea how to use them in recipes!
Scramble one egg really well then use 2tsp of it. That is what I used to do then save the leftover egg to add to my breakfast scramble. I used flax meal (its super cheap) in this and most recipes now or maybe 2tsp of baking powder?
Hey Katie, do you need a ghost writer to help answer all these comments?! 😉
Oh goodness, yes. That would be awesome ;). I wish I could figure out a way to send some comments to a different inbox.
The problem is that people keep asking the same questions over and over (especially on posts with over 500 comments). I completely understand why they don’t want to go back to look for their answers in the other hundreds of comments… but it’s no fun saying the same thing over and over! I wish more people knew about “control f” where you can search the comments for keywords!
I had no idea about control f and now I’m so glad I do! That will make things much easier since you get so many comments on your posts. Maybe you should mention that in a couple of posts because I bet most people don’t know about it.
Definitely mention Control F…that saves us from having to search thru tons of posts-big help to everyone involved…I didn’t know about it before, so thanks! And I’m making this right now…dying to try it!
Suggestion: Put a Q&A section at the end of each post, then answer the most frequent questions there. You could also include interesting reader tips (like using gf flour) or links to the tips in that section. Then if someone asks a question that has already been answered, just ignore them or refer them to the Q&A section in the post. You could also include a note about the control F feature there. I’m an old MS Dos user and I still use WordPerfect so I use that feature as well as others a lot.
Wow, this looks amazing! I love anything with coconut and tropical flavours, and I attempted to make my own coconut-pineapple-banana loaf recently, but it didn’t turn out quite right. Next time, I will follow your recipe, since it looks so moist and dense – just the way I prefer my loafs/cakes!
Also, I just went to Thailand for the first time last month and I loved it there – so many fresh fruit smoothies and coconut water everywhere!
This is going to sound really amateur and naive, but how do you suggest crushing the pineapple and draining it?
I bought a can of crushed pineapple, so it was already done. But you could buy chunks (or fresh) and just blend it with the other liquid ingredients.
Oh YUM.
Is it possible to use almond flour or coconut flour (or a mix of the two) in place of spelt flour ?
Sorry, I don’t know.
I think you’d have to add something as a binder, such s xantham gum. Please report back if you do experiment!
The closest place I’ve been to with a tropical climate was Orlando/Indian River. I don’t regret that though, that area of the states has some of my favorite locations. I adore Savannah.
Has anyone made a GF version?
Yes! I made it last night using sweet sorghum flour instead of flour. Just the same amount and no extra binders needed. Note, as I am not vegan, I used 2 eggs rather than the egg replacer – not sure if that helped bind more than a flax egg would.
Other substitutes were that I replaced crushed pineapple (because I didn’t have any) with 1/2 cup mashed banana and 1/2 cup pineapple juice. Amazing, it tasted soooo moist and there were so many flavours! I wanted to come back and thank Katie for the recipe so I hope I helped you out at the same time letting you know a GF version worked perfectly!
Anna, thank you SO much! I felt so badly when I couldn’t answer the people who asked about a gf option, as there’s so much I still need to learn about gf baking. But now I can just direct them to your comment :).
Thank you! I’m going to give it a try today 🙂
Single ladies version? 😉
This is a really old post, but the recipe would still work! https://lett-trim.today/2011/01/13/pia-colada-cupcake-for-one/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
just made this and it was super delicious! Thanks Katie! Even my omnivore friend liked it 🙂 I had no Ener-G so I used flax egg 🙂 Maybe I’ll make this for the first Vegan Bake Sale which I’m organizing in my city! I have never been to Hawaii so far but hopefully I’ll visit Honolulu next year 🙂 Lots of love
I’m really glad it turned out well!
And thanks for reminding me about the vegan bake sale. I completely missed the one in Dallas last year, and I don’t want to do that again!!
I love your RECIPES. I’ve been on a coconut craze lately and this totally feeds into it. Question: Could I sub applesauce instead of banana? (Too much sugar for me due to some meds I am taking) and can I sub coconut flour for spelt?
I can’t vouch for either, since I haven’t tried it.
However, the applesauce would be fine, texture-wise. I just can’t personally vouch for the taste.
I doubt using all coconut flour would hold up, but you’re welcome to experiment… and be sure to report back if you do!
There are many days where I check your blog and I curse your name….this was one of them! I made this yesterday and we love it! I felt like the pineapple added sweetness and moisture w/o really adding pineapple flavor which either is fine for me but I was worried about my little ones not liking it.
We even managed to keep a little left over to have this morning 😉
Another great creation!
I may try pineapple then…. I’m just controlling sugary fruits in my diet right now but I love when morning bread has a moistness too it! 🙂 Ugh! This blog keeps me in the kitchen LOL
Aw thank you, Jenny!
I agree about the not-so-strong pineapple taste. I was originally going for a pina colada bread, but the lack of super-strong pineapple flavor made me change the title ;).
How do I stop the emails from coming into my inbox from the comments? I tried unsubscribing and it didn’t seem to work… 🙁
Deb,
You should be off!
hei katie, been stalking you and your mouth watering recipes for over a year now.
i had a request with pretty please on the side, didn’t know where it would be most appropriate to post it…so here it goes – could you maybe try experimenting with coconut flour in baking recipes?i’ve read a lot about it, been using it for quite a while now, however, it doesn’t seem to yield the brilliant results some people rave about.
many thanks for taking the time to read the comment.
Hi Ania,
I actually have started :). I only have one recipe posted (the gluten-free breakfast pizza), but there are two more so far that I want to post. And I’ll keep experimenting.
Could I have this for breakfast every morning!?!? It looks absolutely delicious!