Day 10 – Coconut Cake (page 23)
I was almost tempted to try and skip this cake as I didn’t feel I could justify buying a whole bottle of Malibu (you remember that that drink from the 80’s?!). However, Paul and I have been rejecting the bottle of wine option at the end of the day, instead whisking up French Martini’s to ‘relax’ 😉 with. Hence the purchase of a cocktail shaker set, 2 martini glasses and ideas of setting up a cocktail cabinet. Malibu can slot into this new vision!!
The cake is picture-less in the book so it is another one springing simply from my interpretation of the words on the page.
This may have led to the slight mis-interpretation of how to deal with ‘50g of dessicated coconut soaked in 150ml of boiling water‘. Do you drain it? Do you leave the water in? Hmmm….well I left the water in and the cake batter was decidedly more sloppy than what I would normally expect. Seems to have baked ok, although the dip rather than rise in the middle is a slight worry.
Toasting the dessicated coconut in a dry frying pan was satisfying – watching it turn golden brown from icy white was strangely pleasing (it’s the small things). Coconut buttercream – delicious. The icing for the top of the cake is a mix of royal icing sugar and malibu. I think I must have mis-measured my tablespoons of booze (years of practicing generous measures!) as it was all a bit runny. As with the Boston Cream Pie, I only really realised that once it was on the cake:
The runny icing doesn’t impair the taste at all though! Rohan is back from his second half-day at school and we enjoyed sharing a lunch-time slice of tropical paradise. Not too sure how child-friendly the malibu icing/buttercream are as it’s not like I’ve ‘boiled away the alcohol‘….he seems pretty jolly anyway which is a good thing! I feel like I need a sleep…
Marks out of 10 – 8.5
Bakers comment: this is a cake I think I could make look a lot better next time with less runny icing. Would be nice to try it with lime and malibu icing or a lime curd alongside the buttercream. Interesting.
bellamyadventures 