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Cakes can be easy to make – or – judging from some recipe’s I’ve read, they can be extraordainarily difficult.
I was raised with a simple 1-2-3-4 cake. It can be varied with different ingredients and it doesn’t take a genius to remember the recipe without pouring, once again, over many cookbooks. This is the basis for the coconut cake.
1 – One cup of organic butter (equivalent to two sticks)
Put butter in your stand mixer and let it whirl for a few minutes
2. Two cups organic turbinado sugar
Add the sugar to the butter, pouring it slowly while your mixer is on – almost, but not quite to the highest setting. Don’t let the butter mix too far ahead of adding the sugar because you can get the whipped cream look to your mixture if you add the sugar just a minute or two after you start whipping the butter.
3. In a bowl measure three cups organic STONE-GROUND whole wheat pastry flour
To this you want to add one teaspoon baking powder and a pinch of salt. Mix this with a spoon or wire whisk until you’ve put lots of air into the flour.
4. Four organic eggs
Add the eggs to the sugar and butter mixture one at a time, mixing until they are fully incorporated, but don’t mix this too long. The sugar and butter can be whipped forever and the cake gets better the longer they mix. Once you start adding eggs, don’t beat the cake too much.
After the eggs are incorporated, alternate adding the flour mixture and the liquid to the sugar-egg-butter mix. In this case, for the coconut cake, the liquid is either one can or 1/2 can of organic coconut milk. If you are good at making your own coconut milk, go ahead, it makes for a better cake, but the canned organic variety is my speed at this point in time……..for two reasons a) I don’t know how to make coconut milk and b) I can never find organic coconuts to experiment.
If you would like a creamier cake, add the whole can of organic coconut milk. I find 1/2 can is more to my taste – it produces a drier cake, but not too dry.
Put the cake in either two* or four* cake pans which have been well buttered and bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. That is an estimate of time because each stove will bake in a different time frame. When the cake looks done, springs back when you touch the top and a straw or knife put in the center comes out clean, then you know the cake is done.
*If you like lots of icing on your cake you might consider making four layers. If you like a less sweet cake then you want to choose to make only two layers.
One goodness of a cake made with all organic ingredients is that it tends to be less sweet than a cake made with white granulated sugar.
Take the cake out of the oven and let it cool.
The long part is the icing:
Break 4 eggs and separate them – the egg whites are what you want to use for this icing. The only reason is because the icing on a coconut cake should be white and to use the entire egg would produce a more ivory/brownish looking cake. It has a better taste, but the romance around a coconut cake is shattered. (What to do with the egg yolks for all of us who think frugally – use them to make Bettina’s Chocolate Pudding.)
Set the egg whites aside. Put one cup organic turbinado sugar in a glass corning pot. Add one cup of water. Just pour in the water, don’t stir, don’t touch anything in the pot once you pour in the water and pour slowly so the water doesn’t splash around the pot as you add it.
Turn on the flame and let the water and sugar cook until the mixture becomes a simple syrup – which means until the mixture reaches 240 degrees on a candy thermometer.
When the mixture reaches 240 degrees, put the egg whites in your stand mixer and whip them until they begin to have soft peaks. When you reach that stage with the egg whites, gradually and slowly pour in the hot syrup. Be very careful with the syrup because it is really, really hot and can burn you severely if not handled properly.
You can add coconut syrup, vanilla syrup or any other kind of flavoring you would like at this point. Pour the hot syrup into the egg whites VERY VERY gradually and let this whip for a very generous length of time.
At this point you can do one of two things:
1. Once the egg whites have become substantial and hold their peaks looking white, fluffy and beautiful, take a small portion aside in a bowl and add your favorite preserves (ginger preserves make an unusual and very delicious touch), lightly mixing by hand. Use this mixture for the filling in your cake. OR – you can add lots of shredded coconut to this mixture – stirring by hand – and use that for the filling with the rest used to slather very thickly on the top and sides of the cake. And voila – you have your coconut cake.
2. If you prefer a more butter-cream icing, you can start adding pats of butter to the mixture as it whips and let it continue to whip until it has a very whipped creamy/butter-creamy look. This is delicious. Of course, it will take all of the butter in the house, plus some you will get from a quick trip to the store, –while your icing is mixing, — as you realize you don’t have enough butter in the house for this icing to come through properly, — but it will be worth the hassle.
Use this as you would the other icing – stir lots of shredded coconut into this icing; put a generous amount of icing on each cake layer; put the layers together and slather the rest on the top and sides of the cake.
Because these icings hold peaks nicely, you can really get imaginative in making the cake look spectacular.
Sometimes when adding butter to the whipped syrup and egg white mixture, your icing can break and when you look at it in the mixer you think you have a loser, but do not fear, just let the mixture keep on going – maybe as long as 15-20 minutes or longer and your icing will come through beautifully for you.
You can put this buttery icing on the cake, or you can sit in a corner with the bowl, making sure no one sees you, and eat until your heart is content. It roughly reminds you of a wedding cake. Whatever is left from this little act of gluttony can still be the icing on your coconut cake.
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