Chocolate, Brazil Nut and Coconut Cake

One sunny summer day in Rio, I was visiting Casas Pedro, a store in Copacabana (see box), where you can easily spend an hour browsing through nuts, spices and condiments. I fell into a chat with the vendor, who told me that a bag of castanha do pará (Brazil nuts) had just arrived. By the end of my shopping spree, I had bought a handful of nuts, coconut and a few other Brazilian ingredients. I knew exactly what I wanted to prepare with these tre