Coconut. Pecans. Cream cheese. Sweet, luxurious goodness. In other words, a dream! To be honest, this was only my second cake bake from scratch (the first being a rendition of Milk Bar's Birthday Cake ... more to come on that later). This recipe came from a local school cookbook - you know, one of those spiraled notebooks with the same font and spacing seen across middle America kitchens in the 1980s. These things are treasure troves of tried and true recipes... including this one. So, if you see one lying around, put it to good use! I used this recipe as my home base and then added some personal touches along the way:
Here's what you'll need for the cake:
5 eggs, separated
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups sugar
1 stick butter (or oleo aka margarine aka isn't it really just all the same thing? #newbie)
1/2 cup shortening
2 cups flour
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup coconut
1 cup chopped pecans
*I used more of the coconut and pecans for decoration
For the cream cheese icing:
1 box (or 3.5 cups) powdered sugar
1 stick butter (or oleo - same conundrum)
1 (8oz) package cream cheese
1.5 teaspoon vanilla
pinch(es) of salt
To start, mix the buttermilk and baking soda together and let it sit. Next, beat egg whites "until stiff." HERE was where I had quite the adventure. I had recently watched Julie and Julia, that cute movie with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams showing the joys (and sometimes sorrows) of French cooking. I had in my memory a scene where Meryl whipped egg whites into this beautiful buttercream-looking concoction with simply a whisk. So, here I go to beat my FIVE egg whites together armed only with a whisk and a burning desire to be my own version of Meryl Streep playing Julia Child. Meta, I know. All you need to know- I failed miserably. After ~10 minutes of ferociously whisking those egg whites into oblivion, I took one teensy tiny break to rest my aching arm - only to find when I came back, the eggs were all separated and curdly looking. REAL appetizing. Heck no was I putting that in my cake. I started over - this time after a lengthy Google and YouTube search on how to beat egg whites the CORRECT way and ended up just beating them in the stand mixer for awhile. Probably 7ish minutes. Lesson learned! :) I set those aside once they were all peaked and perky.
Cream sugar, butter, shortening, and add the egg yolks in one by one. Beat that well together, add the flour alternating with the buttermilk mixture. Add vanilla, coconut, and pecans, then fold in the egg whites last! VOILA! We have a cake batter.
I poured my batter into two separate 9-inch Nordic Ware cake pans (or sandwich tins, which they say in the UK and I absolutely adore), which I had previously lined the bottom and sides with butter. I cut out 9-inch circles of parchment paper and placed that on the bottom of each pan as well.
Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 30-35 minutes or until the sides look golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Once those are out of the oven, I let mine cool in the pans for awhile before hustling them out of there and left to cool some more on a cookie rack. They need to be completely cooled before any icing goes on... and on that note!
Cream cheese icing YUM :) I mixed all of the ingredients together for the cream cheese icing in my stand mixer, adding in salt as needed to give it that sweet but tangy flavor I love. Without the salt, it kind of tasted too sweet for my liking, so just play around with the flavors that you prefer.
As far as decorating goes, I stacked my first 9-inch cake round on some parchment paper on the only thing I had available (a pizza pan LOL)... still working on getting my supplies. Then, I added a layer of the cream cheese icing with a healthy layer of chopped pecans. These pecans I had crushed in the food processor to make them a tad smaller and easier to spread on the cake. I added another dose of the cream cheese icing for good measure. Stack the other 9-inch cake round on top and then glop the rest of that sweet icing on. Here's where you can get creative with the ingredients - basically pecans GALORE. I also liked adding the coconut sprinkled on top because it had a nice, fresh look to it. I crushed up some more pecans and put them at the foot of the cake. Sprinkled even more on top. (I really like pecans). You can take whatever creative liberties you see fit.
Overall, I thought this cake was a knock-out home run. I would think I was full and then, before I knew it, I was going in for another bite. So sweetly enticing. So Italian. So delicious. Enjoy!
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