Recipe #10: Coconut Cake

I've been quite excited about this one for a while now - I skip ahead a few pages every now again when I'm feeling uninspired about a recipe. When I see something a little further in that I really want to make it gives me a bit of a kickstart into making the rest! There is no picture for this one, but I imagine it to be beautfully piled up with big fluffy white clouds of icing and coconut sprinkled all over the top.

The cakes are (again) virtually the same as the Victorian Sponge cakes - the only change is the addition of grated coconut, so the cakes have a less-desserty-more-tea-party flavour to them. Nigella says to do quite a few of these recipes in the food processor too, which even though it makes me feel like a bit of cheat... it also makes things a whole lot easier. I figure if the Domestic Goddess herself says its OK, then it's OK. Also, my arms are feeling a lot better these days - if it wasn't for the food processor, I would probably have some seriously built muscles on my mixing arm.




So I have two perfectly cooked, beautiful coconut-sponge-cakes (thanks to my now-awesome oven skills... no more burnt cakes!!!) that I need to layer up. This recipe called for a coconut flavoured buttercream icing in the middle, and a royal icing on top but I couldn't find royal icing at the supermarket (is it the same thing as the white icing that goes on fruit/wedding cakes? If it is I don't like it anyway), so I opted instead to just make a double batch of the buttercream icing. This icing is really really easy - and with the addition of toasted coconut and Malibu (yes, that's right MALIBU. I love Nigella) it was sooooo tasty. Maybe a little bit extravagent having two whole layers of it though. Especially when they are 'Rachel' layers, meaning really really thick. I'm a sucker for delicious icing. Pretty much the only reason I eat carrot cake is for all that cream cheese icing.... mmmmm.




I had a bit of extra toasted coconut left over at the end, so I even got to sprinkle to my hearts content over the top of the cake. What a pretty sight! And the perfect addition to my work shout today... (My supervisor at work calls me the resident Martha Stewart - I hope that's supposed to be a compliment..!

Chris' rating: 6/5! Wow, what a sweet boy... my best score yet! (Note: not my personal favourite so far though, faves for me are the Zucchini Cake and Lemon-Syrup Loaf Cake)