Sweet!

After contemplating far too many recipes, I finally settled on a cake I found on-line called Coconut Poke Cake. This recipe did call for a boxed white cake and I went with it instead of making my own (sorry)! I have never had nor eaten coconut cake which is a shame because this was sooooo good.
After baking your cake, you poke a bunch of deep holes with a utility fork. Then your pour a can of condensed milk mixed with a can of cream of coconut over the whole thing. The cake absorbs this thick mixture and makes it insanely moist and delicious.

After the cake cools, you frost it with whipped topping (note: I would not do this again-a cream cheese or a vanilla frosting would have been way better) and top with sweetened flaked coconut. Couldn't be an easier recipe, looks beautiful and tastes amazing.

Coconut Cake Bleh

I have to admit, I was disappointed with the way my coconut cake came out. This was extra disappointing, since I have been looking forward to trying this for so long.

I made, as advertised, Paula Deen's recipe. I didn't have self rising flour in the house and made a last minute executive decision to use the all purpose I did have. The cakes tasted good but were definitely more dense than Paula intended. I now know that self rising flour really does make a difference!

The bigger problem was with the frosting. I followed the recipe, improvising a double burner that I don't have, and beat the ingredients for exactly seven minutes. By the time those seven minutes had passed, I had something that very nearly resembled frosting. Unfortunately, it was still a little thin and runny. Paula Deen doesn't note what to do in this case — does it thicken upon standing? The concoction is hot at this point, so maybe it gets stiffer as it cools? Who knows? Well, now I do: it does not get thicker upon standing or cooling. In retrospect, I think I probably needed to keep beating it to get more air in it, but I didn't want to over cook the ingredients. This means that despite tasting pretty good, my cake looked a bit like a hot, runny mess.

I love coconut cake, but I don't love this recipe. In addition to the trouble listed above, I thought the filling was a little weird. I would have preferred something a little sweeter. I'm glad I gave this one a shot, but I'll attempt a different coconut cake next time around.

The filling


The troublesome frosting

Assembled but not frosted

Final, ugly cake

Coconut Cake: Baby No Sleepy

First, thanks to Tori for choosing this month's Have the Cake recipe! I've always wanted to make a coconut cake, as they are so lovely and delicious, but I've never been brave enough. For some reason, I imagined this recipe would be much more complicated.

Second, despite the relative simplicity of the cake and frosting recipe, Piper has been reluctant to sleep this month. Yesterday I tried to fit too many things in during the day. Since my girls' night out started at 4:30, I was planning to frost the cake during Piper's afternoon nap. She cut said nap short - sleeping only about 30 minutes - and was incredibly cranky (the photo was taken this morning). So, I had to entertain her, then feed her, then hand her to my long-suffering husband who should have been working, toast the coconut, whip the icing, and try to slap the whole thing on the cake before running out of the house. Needless to say, the cake doesn't look as pretty as it could have.

For my recipe, I turned again to my trusty Pie in the Sky cookbook, using the 7,000 ft. version. The cake is a basic 1-2-3-4 cake, with coconut icing and topped with toasted coconut. Some friends are coming up tonight for dinner and dessert, so I hope it tastes good!

Tropical Coconut Cake

Tropical Coconut Cake Adapted by Whipped

We love coconut cake and I have made this one a few times before. I could not find the recipe I used, but this one is the same one, as far as I can see...

I made it this time without the mango sauce, hard to find one right now...I added the pineapple into the actual cake mix, not the frosting. And I used a white cake mix, not yellow.

It was delicious, and also very moist because of the added fruit :)
I had to give most of it away because it is deadly having this in the house!

Enjoy!

Coconut Bundt Cake

What a tricky month for me to start on! My husband doesn't like coconut at all, and I wasn't about to eat an entire cake by myself...but I also was determined to not wuss out on my very first month as a member of this group. At first I thought I might make bring coconut cake to Thanksgiving, but couldn't quite figure out when I'd have the time to bake for it. And then I realized -- my department at work was having a Tea the day after Veteran's Day! I wasn't _going_ to the Tea, but I could still bake for them.
I also remembered that I have a pan for mini bundt cakes, which gave me the opportunity to sample my baked goods without donating a cake minus one slice. So, I went searching for a recipe, and found this one at Epicurious.

Coconut Bundt Cake with Powdered-Sugar Glaze
Ingredients:

• 3 cups cake flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 6 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon coconut extract
• 1 1/4 cups canned unsweetened coconut milk
• 2 cups (packed) sweetened flaked coconut (about 7 ounces)

• 1 3/4 cups powdered sugar
• Additional sweetened flaked coconut (optional)

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Generously butter 12-cup Bundt pan; dust pan with flour. Stir 3 cups cake flour and salt in medium bowl to blend. Beat butter in large bowl until fluffy. Gradually add 2 1/2 cups sugar, beating until well blended. Beat in eggs 1 at a time, then both extracts. Beat in flour mixture in 4 additions alternately with 1 cup coconut milk in 3 additions. Fold in 2 cups flaked coconut. Transfer batter to prepared pan; smooth top.

Bake cake until top is golden brown and tester inserted near center comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes. Cool cake in pan 5 minutes. Turn cake out onto rack; cool completely.

Whisk powdered sugar and remaining 1/4 cup coconut milk in medium bowl to blend. Spoon glaze over cake. Top with additional coconut, if desired.

The Result
The batter mixed together very easily, although like somebody before me, I had some fun with my electric mixer and the butter. The butter kept wanting to jerk my mixer away from me. But I prevailed. There was a LOT more batter here than I had predicted -- I wound up making not 6 mini cakes, but 12!

For the glaze, I found that the proportion of coconut milk to sugar was a bit...thick. It was very gloppy. So I just kept adding coconut milk until it seemed more like a proper glaze consistency.

I had never had coconut cake before, but was very pleased with how this came out. For the great quantities of coconut related ingredients, the flavor was surprisingly mellow -- I was worried it would be overwhelming. And they went over well at the Tea, too -- my librarian told me that when he left, there were only two left, and he had quite enjoyed the one he ate!

~Veronica

Part 2 (before part1)

Sorry, everybody. I guess it was a case of "premature blog post syndrome", because I wanted to post the recipe and a picture of the finished cake, but my computer decided it had had enough, I guess, and posted on

it's own!!

Cake

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 TBS baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 1/4 C sugar

1 1/2 C unsalted butter

5 large eggs

1 1/3 C heavy cream 1 TBS vanilla

Preheat oven to 325.

Butter and flour 3 9" cake pans.

In a large bowl combine flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.

In another large bowl, beat butter and sugar until fluffy.

Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each.

Beat in cream and vanilla.

Stir in flour mixture (batter will be thick).

Divide batter into 3 pans. Bake 30-35 minutes.

Cool in pan 10 minutes, then tip out onto wire rack until completely cooled.

Filing:

1 C sugar

3TBS flour

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 (8oz.) can crushed pineapple

1 TBS butter

1tsp vanilla

Combine sugar and flour in a saucepan. Add remaining ingredients and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens, about 2 minutes. cool completely.

Frosting:

2 (8oz.) packages cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 C butter, softened

2 C powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

Usind an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and cream cheese in a large bowl. Beat in sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy.

Place 1 layer on a cake plate. Spread 1/2 filling and 1/3 cup coconut on cake. Repeat with 2nd layer. Add top layer. Frost cake. Pat coconut over top andsides until well covered.

fluffy.

Giant Coconut Layer Cake

I had never made a coconut cake before, but it sounded yummy (and it was!). Thanks, Tori.

I spent a very long time online searching for the "perfect" recipe. I quickly came to the conclusion that no one bakes cakes from scratch anymore, since the majority of the recipes started with "for cake, follow the directions on the box"! The recipe I ended up using was a hybrid of 2 that I found. Something called Peninsula Grill Giant Coconut Layer Cake sounded wonderful, but I thought the filling would be quite bland. I finally found a recipe on cooks.com for a cake with pineapple filling, which sounded really, really good,and I went with that.

It was an easy cake to make. Just cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs and then the flour. Divide the batter into 3 pans and bake.

My favorite part was making the pineapple filling. You just put everything into a saucepan and gently cook for a couple of minutes. The fun part was watching all that "stuff" gradually thicken into a creamy, rich filling. My hunch is that the eggs do the thickening, since the main ingrediants are predominently sugar and canned pineapple.

Once the cakes and the filling had cooled I got to put the layers together and make the frosting.

Half of the filling and 1/3 of a cup of coconut went on the first layer, followed by the 2nd layer, the rest of the filling and more coconut. The third layer and then on to the frosting!

It truly amazes me that a simple mixture of cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar can taste so outrageously good. Not onlt that, but it was fluufy and creamy. A miracle! The hardest part was getting the coconut onto the cake once it was frosted. The directions said to "sprinkle" the coconut on the frosting and gently press it into the cake. It felt more like a combination of plastering something with my barehands and really messy finger painting. I sort of slapped a handful of coconut onto the sides of the cake - there was coconut all over the counter, the cake and me. But it definately was worth the mess.!

I went to a dinner party that night with some friends from my book group and I took the cake in lieu of a bottle of wine. To say it was a hit is an understatement - everybody there raved about it. There was not a morsel left!

This wasn't a terribly expensive cake to make, but I doubt I'd make it on a regular basis- it has almost a day's worth of calories and enough fat and sugar to put you WAY over your daily recommended intake. But for a special occaison, where everybody's overeating :), it'd be perfection.

White Coconut Cake

The dessert for the month of November over at Have The Cake is coconut cake....one that I've never tried before.  Sure, I've done the standard Easter Bunny Cake with the dyed coconut, and the German Chocolate cake with the coconut-pecan icing, but never an honest-to-goodness coconut flavored cake, so this is a new thing for me as well.  This challenge is definitely stretching my experience!

I chose Tyler Florence's White Coconut Cake recipe as it looked yummy and utilized rum, which, having an entire bottle of Coconut Rum in the fridge to get rid of, sounded like just the ticket!

I'm a huge fan of coconut rum, especially in Coke.  Nothing better, really.  So off we go after the jump.

Coconut Birthday Cake

My new favorite cake is coconut cake. Delicious!

Our November challenge was to make a coconut cake. Thank you Tori! It is my birthday today so I had planned to make this as my birthday cake. My friend and fellow HTC baker, Michelle, was coming over to bake it with me. We decided to half the recipe since I only had one cake pan available. We would have had to wait forever to make three layers so we went with one. We used a Paula Deen recipe.

The cake was pretty easy to make but beating the butter at first proved a bit challenging. It climbed all over the beaters and was really thick. The electric mixer struggled a bit but in the end made it through. The best part was the frosting. I had never made frosting from scratch so this was a first. The frosting came out so shiny that Michelle was laughing that the camera flash was bouncing off the cake. We had fun frosting the cake and then covered it with coconut. The cake looked heavenly white and hairy with coconut. The recipe had mentioned that the frosting can turn grainy if the boiling water hit the bowl and ours did. We didn't even notice it while eating the cake. We were only aware when we scooped out remaining frosting and accidentally dunked our fingers in it :)

I took one look at the cake and said "Can we just cut it into 4 and call it a day?" Yes, we each ate 1/4 of the cake and it was good. I think I cursed after the first bite in a good way. I love this cake. I would have never ever thought to make it so thank you Tori for the challenge.

I'm posting the original recipe that yields 3 layers.

Basic 1-2-3-4 Cake:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 3 cups sifted self-rising flour
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

A little tip about self rising flour is that you can make it yourself. There is no need to buy special flour. The ratio of ingredients is usually about 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder per cup of flour with a pinch of salt.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease and flour 3 (9-inch) cake pans. Using an electric mixer, cream butter until fluffy. Add sugar and continue to cream well for 6 to 8 minutes. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour and milk alternately to creamed mixture, beginning and ending with flour. Add vanilla and continue to beat until just mixed. Divide batter equally among prepared pans. Level batter in each pan by holding pan 3 or 4 inches above counter, then dropping it flat onto counter. Do this several times to release air bubbles and assure you of a more level cake. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until done. Cool in pans 5 to 10 minutes. Invert cakes onto cooling racks. Cool completely and spread cake layers with your favorite frosting to make a 3-layer cake.

7-Minute Frosting:

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar or 1 tablespoon white corn syrup
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup water
• 2 egg whites
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Place sugar, cream of tartar or corn syrup, salt, water, and egg whites in the top of a double boiler. Beat with a handheld electric mixer for 1 minute. Place pan over boiling water, being sure that boiling water does not touch the bottom of the top pan. (If this happens, it could cause your frosting to become grainy). Beat constantly on high speed with electric mixer for 7 minutes. Beat in vanilla.

November Challenge: Coconut Cake

I know November's baking line up is often filled with pumpkins, and I wondered whether you'd all be hoping for something of that nature that you could bring to Thanksgiving dinner. All I can say is: I hope your relatives also like coconuts.

I've been wanting to make coconut cake for a while. My birthday was in September, and I almost baked myself a coconut birthday cake. Instead I got lazy and baked nothing. So this one has been on my to-try list for quite a while.

I first fell head-over-heels for coconut cake at Billy's Bakery in Chelsea. Any of you who are close to NYC should really check it out. While I'm partial to the coconut, you really can't go wrong there. And they are extremely generous with their cake cutting!

Below is the recipe I'm going to try, which is from butter lover extraordinaire, Paula Deen. There is also a really tasty looking recipe in this month's Jamie.

Happy baking!

Cake:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 3 cups sifted self-rising flour
• 1 cup canned unsweetened coconut milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease and flour 3 (9-inch) cake pans. Using an electric mixer, cream butter until fluffy. Add sugar and continue to cream well for 6 to 8 minutes. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour and milk alternately to creamed mixture, beginning and ending with flour. Add vanilla and continue to beat until just mixed. Divide batter equally among prepared pans. Level batter in each pan by holding pan 3 or 4 inches above counter, then dropping it flat onto counter. Do this several times to release air bubbles and assure you of a more level cake. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until done. Cool in pans 5 to 10 minutes. Invert cakes onto cooling racks and cool completely.

Filling

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 cup sour cream
• 4 tablespoons milk
• 1/2 cup flaked, sweetened coconut

Stir together sugar, sour cream, milk, and coconut in a bowl until well blended.

Using the wrong end of a wooden spoon, poke holes in the first layer of the cake, approximately 1-inch apart until entire cake has been poked. Spread 1/3 of filling mixture on cake layer. Top with second layer, repeat process. Top with last layer and repeat process again.

Frosting:

• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar or 1 tablespoon white corn syrup
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup water
• 2 egg whites
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Place sugar, cream of tartar or corn syrup, salt, water, and egg whites in the top of a double boiler. Beat with a handheld electric mixer for 1 minute. Place pan over boiling water, being sure that boiling water does not touch the bottom of the top pan. (If this happens, it could cause your frosting to become grainy). Beat constantly on high speed with electric mixer for 7 minutes. Beat in vanilla.

Frost top and sides of cake. Sprinkle top and sides of cakes with additional coconut.