I wanted to make a decadent layer cake for the party. First, I started out by reading the birthday cake from Momofuku's Milk Bar (by Christina Tossi). However, due to time restraints and some of the harder to find ingredients in that cake, such as citric acid and glucose, I decided to "settle" with the Coconut Layer Cake recipe I had seen in Bon Appetit Magazine a couple of months ago.
To be honest, most of the description drew me in. It sounded and looked fancy, but if your cakes weren't perfect, they would be covered up with lots of icing and toasted coconut! Good news for me since my problems are with the aesthetics! I really love baking. I think it's because it has to be exact, there is a science to it, and I always have to follow a recipe. It's not like Greg's recipes from his head, I can actually quantify the items...and I definitely have had more successes with my baking than making dinner.
I printed off this recipe on a Friday afternoon at work, and someone picked it up and exclaimed: "Ooh, who's making this?" That was before they saw the nutritional information page...which I didn't even bring home - that went straight to recycling. I mean really, what would you expect from a cake that is made of coconut oil, shredded coconut, buttermilk, cake flour, sugar and baking powder?? I haven't even mentioned the icing yet...because I made the 4 cakes this evening (they are cut in half to make an 8 layer cake), but managed to wreck 2 of them! Here I call oven foul - my two cakes on the top of the oven were perfect, but the bottom two had a burnt outside, even though I placed the racks just as the recipe said. Tomorrow I will redo and bake two at a time...I knew something was up when they were finishing up all at different times! I probably could have saved the cakes, but pigged out and tried one right away before Greg had a chance to tell me they were salvageable...whoops...
Round two of the cakes was a success, thank goodness. It really was the most coconutty cake, even without the icing. Given how much coconut (coconut oil and shredded coconut) is in the cake, it's not surprising.
I bravely strided on that afternoon - one hour before company was to arrive - with the icing, which was butter and coconut and cream cheese heavy! I learnt the hard way that when making a "southern" recipe, when it calls for cream cheese, you should probably go with the cheap regular blocks. I made the mistake of buying "fancy" cream cheese which I think was whipped. That of course made the icing turn to soup. Round two!!! After a trip to the store, it was successful with your run of the mill cream cheese.
Just like the recipe said, it was convenient to have all that icing to cover up any cake errors. Even better, all those toasted coconut chips cover any poor icing skills (like mine...). In the end, this cake was so tall that we had to keep it cool in the garage instead of the fridge.
It deinitely wowed the table, as did my stories of how this thing came to be. If I were to make it again, I would definitely know what I was up against! Quite worth it though in the end, down to every last bit of coconut.
The recipe can be found here: http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2012/02/coconut-southern-comfort-layer-cake
Enjoy!
To be honest, most of the description drew me in. It sounded and looked fancy, but if your cakes weren't perfect, they would be covered up with lots of icing and toasted coconut! Good news for me since my problems are with the aesthetics! I really love baking. I think it's because it has to be exact, there is a science to it, and I always have to follow a recipe. It's not like Greg's recipes from his head, I can actually quantify the items...and I definitely have had more successes with my baking than making dinner.
I printed off this recipe on a Friday afternoon at work, and someone picked it up and exclaimed: "Ooh, who's making this?" That was before they saw the nutritional information page...which I didn't even bring home - that went straight to recycling. I mean really, what would you expect from a cake that is made of coconut oil, shredded coconut, buttermilk, cake flour, sugar and baking powder?? I haven't even mentioned the icing yet...because I made the 4 cakes this evening (they are cut in half to make an 8 layer cake), but managed to wreck 2 of them! Here I call oven foul - my two cakes on the top of the oven were perfect, but the bottom two had a burnt outside, even though I placed the racks just as the recipe said. Tomorrow I will redo and bake two at a time...I knew something was up when they were finishing up all at different times! I probably could have saved the cakes, but pigged out and tried one right away before Greg had a chance to tell me they were salvageable...whoops...
Round two of the cakes was a success, thank goodness. It really was the most coconutty cake, even without the icing. Given how much coconut (coconut oil and shredded coconut) is in the cake, it's not surprising.
I bravely strided on that afternoon - one hour before company was to arrive - with the icing, which was butter and coconut and cream cheese heavy! I learnt the hard way that when making a "southern" recipe, when it calls for cream cheese, you should probably go with the cheap regular blocks. I made the mistake of buying "fancy" cream cheese which I think was whipped. That of course made the icing turn to soup. Round two!!! After a trip to the store, it was successful with your run of the mill cream cheese.
Just like the recipe said, it was convenient to have all that icing to cover up any cake errors. Even better, all those toasted coconut chips cover any poor icing skills (like mine...). In the end, this cake was so tall that we had to keep it cool in the garage instead of the fridge.
It deinitely wowed the table, as did my stories of how this thing came to be. If I were to make it again, I would definitely know what I was up against! Quite worth it though in the end, down to every last bit of coconut.
The recipe can be found here: http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2012/02/coconut-southern-comfort-layer-cake
Enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment