Tropical Jackfruit Cake with Coconut Glaze

If you’ve gone through all the work of taking apart a jackfruit, you should reward yourself with this Tropical Jackfruit Cake with Coconut Glaze. It’s easy, delicious, and it will transport you right to the tropics.

Tropical Jackfruit Cake with Coconut Glaze

What Is Jackfruit?

Before we get into the cake, let’s do a quick jackfruit refresher. The jackfruit is an enormous (15 to 30 pound) tropical fruit. It has a hard, bumpy exterior.

Inside, you’ll find flavorful yellow jackfruit pods and large jackfruit seeds.

Here’s a cross-section of a jackfruit. See those seeds? You can use them, too.

If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on a whole jackfruit, we have a jackfruit tutorial to help you take it apart. But if you just want fresh jackfruit that you can work with right away, Melissa’s is now selling fresh jackfruit pods in a clear plastic package. (If you don’t see it in the store, ask your produce manager.)

Fresh jackfruit pods

Using Jackfruit in Cooking

Jackfruit pods (the fleshy part inside of a fresh jackfruit) are amazing in that they’re completely versatile. They’re faintly sweet, but not too sweet, which means you can use them for savory dishes like BBQ Jackfruit Sliders. And of course they’re great in sweet dishes, like this cake.

This cake also has crushed macadamia nuts, coconut flakes, and candied ginger. So when it’s in the dead of winter and you need a reminder of what it’s like to be on a tropical beach, this jackfruit cake is the one for you.

To make the cake, we took the jackfruit pods and chopped them into thin slivers. In that sense, you can think of this as something like a carrot cake, with the jackfruit subbing in for the carrots.

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Tropical Jackfruit Cake with Coconut Glaze Recipe

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Tropical Jackfruit Cake with Coconut Glaze

This delicious cake gets its tropical feel from fresh jackfruit, along with coconut, macadamia nuts, and candied ginger.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Keyword cake, candied ginger, coconut, dessert, frosting, ginger, jackfruit, macadamia nuts

Prep Time 25 minutes

Cook Time 1 hour

Total Time 1 hour 25 minutes

Servings 12

Ingredients

For the Cake

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups chopped fresh jackfruit pods
• 1/4 cup crushed macadamia nuts
• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
• 1/4 cup chopped candied ginger

For the Glaze

• 1 cup plus two tablespoons powdered sugar
• 2 tbsp coconut milk
• additional jackfruit pods for garnish (optional)

Instructions

1. In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside

2. Mix together the oil, eggs, and vanilla. Add the sugar and combine thoroughly. Stir in the jackfruit.

3. Slowly add the flour mixture to the jackfruit mixture, and stir gently, being careful not to over stir. Add in the macadamia nuts, coconut, and ginger, and stir until thoroughly mixed.

4. Pour the batter into a well-greased bundt pan. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. The top should have a nice crunch to it.

5. To glaze the cake: Just before you are ready to serve it, whisk together the powdered sugar and coconut milk. Pour the glaze over the cake. Garnish with additional jackfruit pieces if desired.

Note that the glaze is thin and tends to get soaked up by the cake. So if you want a more dramatic effect, glaze it after the cake has cooled, and just before you are about to serve it.

We also like serving it side by side with fresh jackfruit pods. (However, if you garnish the cake with jackfruit pieces, you’ll want to store leftover cake in the refrigerator. You don’t want the fresh jackfruit on top to turn brown.) You could also serve it with some coconut ice cream… just sayin’…

P.S. If you’re looking for another jackfruit dessert recipe, try this Jackfruit Upside Down Cake – you’ll love it!

Blogger disclosure: Melissa’s gave us a jackfruit to sample. We did not receive compensation for this post. All opinions expressed are our own. This post contains links to our Amazon affiliate account.