Chocolate Coconut Cake for Passover

I have been making this deeply-flavored and remarkably easy cake every peysekh for something like fifteen years. Two years ago, inspired by the miraculous Indira at Mahanandi, I decided to try this (and all my other coconut-related recipes) with freshly grated coconut, rather than the packaged shreds. The results are, if possible, even more delicious, and a little therapeutic coconut-smashing is just the thing after several weeks of frenzied peysekh-preparation. 

This recipe appears in Yiddish here.

The Lady’s Chocolate Coconut Cake

Preheat oven to 325

7 ounces (2 bars) Maestrani noblesse bittersweet chocolate, broken up

Shredded pulp from one coconut (about 9 ounces, or 2 1/2 cups) or 7 ounces dried shredded coconut

7 ounces sugar

7 egg whites

Prepare your coconut. Heat the oven to 375 (or, if you have something going in the oven, whatever temperature is needed). Pierce two of the three dots on the pointed end (a Phillips-head screwdriver is good for this), and drain out the coconut-water. Drink the water straight, or mix it with something. Warm the coconut in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Wrap the hot nut in a towel and smash it with a hammer. When it is cool enough to handle, pry the pulp from the shell. It will have a thin brown skin, which you may leave on for this recipe, but you may peel off the skin if you want to make perfectly white coconut milk, or something like that.

Grind the chocolate, coconut and sugar in a grinder or food processor. Place the mixture in a large bowl. In another bowl, beat the whites to snow. Fold the whites into the chocolate coconut mix. Pour into a 9 or 10 inch baking pan and bake until firm, about 45 minutes.

This is a wonderful cake. I am a little embarrassed to reveal how easy it is.

פּסחדיק שאָקאָלאַד־קאָקאָסנוס טאָרט