Starbucks Raspberry & Coconut Cake Cube

The Starbucks Raspberry and Coconut Cake Cube costs £5.00 and carries 474 calories with 16g of saturated fat and 36g of sugar. A coconut sponge cube with raspberry through it.

16g of saturated fat is joint second highest on the whole Starbucks UK menu, level with the triple chocolate brownie and the almond croissant, and behind only the lemon tart. Coconut is the reason and it catches people out: coconut oil is over 80 percent saturated fat, a higher proportion than butter.

That makes this the second item on the menu where coconut produces a figure nobody expects, after the vegan overnight oats at 6.6g. Coconut reads as a light, fruity ingredient and behaves nutritionally like the opposite.

36g of sugar is high for the case, ahead of the caramelised biscuit cube at 34g, though raspberry contributes some of it as fruit rather than as added sugar. Fibre at 2.9g is respectable and comes from the desiccated coconut, which is genuinely fibrous.

Raspberry against coconut is a pairing that works for a reason worth naming. Coconut is fatty and sweet with very little acidity of its own, and raspberry is sharp enough to cut straight through it. A coconut cake without fruit tastes cloying by the third mouthful, which is why the combination turns up repeatedly rather than by coincidence.

It is the lighter of the two cubes at 474 calories against 506, and it carries no milk allergen where most of the case does, since coconut is doing the work dairy usually would.

Desiccated coconut and coconut oil do different jobs in the same cake and only one of them is visible. The desiccated shreds give texture and the fibre figure; the oil is what carries the flavour through the crumb and what puts the saturated fat where it is. A cake made with shreds alone would taste faintly of coconut and read very differently on a label.

Egg, almonds, wheat and milk are declared and it is labelled vegetarian. Prices reach £5.75 on delivery. The banana nut loaf is the low saturated fat alternative at 2g.