If you love yuca and coconut you need to try this dessert!

If you have never tried enyucado, it is a traditional Colombian cake made with grated yuca, coconut, star anise and cheese. The yuca provides a great texture and binds the dish together while the coconut adds a lot of flavour and the cheese gives a savoury hint to the dish. This results in a very versatile cake which can be enjoyed as a dessert but also with savoury dishes such as stews or soups as it isn’t overly sweet.

This is my take on the recipe in which instead of the traditional queso fresco (which can be a bit tricky to find outside Colombia) I use cream cheese which gives a nice creamy texture as well as cheesy flavour. But of course if you have access to queso fresco feel free to use that one instead!

🌱Vegetarian

🍽️ 4 portions

Ingredients

• 450g peeled yuca

• 150g dried coconut

• 2 eggs

• 150g evaporated milk (or coconut milk)

• 280g caster sugar

• 75g butter

• 160g cream cheese

• Optional: 1 tsp vanilla or aniseeds

Method

• Preaheat the oven to 180C and place a 20x20cm square baking tin inside to heat up. You will later coat this preheated tin with the caramel which will prevent the caramel from hardening too fast

• Peel the yuca by cutting off the tips and then longitudinally along the skin. Cut into quarters and remove the fibrous inner core. Transfer yuca to a bowl filled with water and rinse well 2-3 times until the water comes out clear. Weight 450g of the yuca

• Finely shred the yuca with a grater into a bowl. Into the same bowl add the coconut, eggs, evaporated milk, 150g of sugar, melted butter, cream cheese and vanilla/aniseeds. Mix everything well with a spoon until the mix is homogeneous.

• Make the caramel by adding the rest of sugar (130g) plus 1tbsp of water to a pan and bring it to medium high heat. Allow the sugar to melt and turn into a golden caramel, which should take around 5 minutes. Take the preheated tin out of the oven and pour the hot caramel while quickly moving the tin around so the caramel evenly coat all the bottom and sides of the tin. Allow then the caramel to harden for a couple of minutes.

• Pour the yuca mix onto the caramel coated tin and then transfer to the preheated oven. Bake for 45-50minutes until the top becomes golden. Remove from the oven and quickly invert into onto a plate too release the golden caramelised bottom from the tin

FAQS and Tips

• Make sure the yuca doesn’t have any black spots as this usually means it is spoiled and it won’t taste good. Alternatively you can use frozen pre-cut yuca.

• You can substitute the cream cheese with queso fresco, roughly break it into chunks with your hands and incorporate into into the cake batter