MangiaMore: COCONUT layer cake

RER 4.5.15

Coconut cake means Easter (or maybe it’s the other way around). But somehow, coconut cake frequently makes an appearance after our family’s fresh Easter dinner. I always associate this kind of cake with Easter, white patented leather shoes for Easter mass, fragrant lilies and warmer weather.

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There’s no way around it; cake is sweet and coconut cake can be super sweet. It’s that too good batter, dense with flaked coconut and sometimes pudding mix, and the creamy butter cream frosting, made with all that butter and powdered sugar, and a liberal coating of sweet flaked coconut.

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This year, we opted for Melissa Clark’s recipe for Coconut Layer Cake adapted from a Telepan favorite. My mother and I stalk cooking.nytimes.com and read Wednesday’s edition of the Food Section, and this recipe immediately grabbed our attention. Clark implies that this version of the classic coconut cake is less cloying and less sweet in her piece “A Sugar Rush, Not Crush,” making it even more desirable for our Easter treat.

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Even though the cake ended up tasting less shockingly sweet, this coconut cake was super rich with butter and eggs. It was moist and dense, but fluffy and almost savory at the same time. Unlike the recipe, we mixed sweetened and unsweetened coconut flakes into the batter, which added texture and life. The rum and orange juice added a mature flare, while the smooth and light cream cheese frosting continued in that vein. Toasted sweetened coconut added more complexity with nutty caramel tones and a crunchy crust. 

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The coconut Easter cake turned out to be a beautiful confection—gorgeous to look at and lovely to taste.

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re.CAP: EASTER

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Easter at our house is always small, but there is something comforting and delicious about the close company. This year was no different (last year was, though). The early spring light flooded our kitchen, where we cooked, baked and ate our Easter dinner. 

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Lively shadows were cast on our simple table topped with pretty whites and cream plates. The effortless feast brought vibrant colors like fresh bright greens from our tangy dressed shaved asparagus salad, dark rich forest from our slow simmered kale, burnt orange yellow from the generous layer of bubbling gruyere topping our scalloped potatoes, dark and light pinks from our salty baked ham, and deep sumptuous burgundy from our delectable red wine. But dessert was white-washed as well glimmering with golden brown notes of toasted coconut and smooth cream cheese frosting (more on this later).

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What did you do to celebrate Easter? Eat anything tasty for Passover? Indulge in any traditions? Follow on facebook, instagram, twitter, and yelp to keep up with foodie ventures.

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4.5.15

RER 4.5.15

MangiaMore: COCONUT cake

RER 3.31.13

This year Easter was a little bit different. My parents were out of town (they left me) so I had Easter dinner with my boyfriend and his family. My contribution was cake, coconut cake.

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Coconut cake is one of those mildly typical Easter desserts, a holiday that symbolizes rebirth and ushers in the spring season. Coconut cake has that feeling as well; it’s not dark and cold, heavy with winter’s heavy spices, but coconut makes you dream of warmer temperatures and lighter days. This cake is so sweet, it reminds you that you are alive, and the creamy white frosting, studded with lovely coconut flakes reminds you what happiness is.

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I chose this epicurious recipe for coconut cake, followed by a coconut cream cheese based frosting. The recipe was not extremely hard, though there was some separating of the eggs and scraping of the cream of coconut can, but nothing that this cake is not worth. I usually use a different recipe, one that is in some ways treasonous (boxed cake mix with addendums…), but this time, I went for the homemade kind, through and through. 

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I think everyone was thoroughly pleased with the results. I know I can’t stop eating it…cold, room temperature, in a bowl, you name it. The cake, though, is rich, dense, sweet and luxurious, but in the end, it is cake.  Unlike the comments following the recipe, I did not encounter any problems; my cake did not end up being dry, or over cooked on the outside and raw in the middle, and I also did not have any frosting meltdowns (meaning thin, runny frosting, nothing a fridge can’t fix). The hardest part of all, was managing to get the sweet flaked coconut on the sides without ruining the aesthetics of the cake.

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In the end, it was a pretty cake that served its function of taming and coddling the sweet tooth in all of us. Baking the cake and participating in Easter dinner made me remember the haunting beauty of the story of the holiday, as well as the satisfaction of time with family.

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