All Coconut Cake
Coconut cream pie is one of my childhood favourite desserts. We used to go to Swiss Chalet a lot when I was a kid. It always involved a ton of gravy that I would pour liberally on my chicken and fries and at the end of the meal my parents would always order coconut cream pie at the end of the meal.
Now, every time I have it, I'm hit with a wave of nostalgia. And, as you might have read in previous posts, food nostalgia is a fascination of mine. So, when I saw the recipe for Coconut Cake I had to make it! Doesn't hurt that my husband is also is a big coconut fan.
This cake is the first one that I’ve made that uses pastry cream between layers with a separate icing on top. Is it worth the extra work? 100%.
The pastry cream is a sweet, dreamy, coconuty delight and would be a great coconut cream pie filling. It is made by combining 1 part coconut cream to 1 part whole milk, and then instead of butter you use coconut oil as the final step. To me, it is the essence of coconut cream pie. When you top this with toasted, shredded coconut it makes the perfect filling.
Coconut milk is integrated into the cake itself, and once cooled these cake layers are sliced to create a taller cake. In the recipe, the cake is comprised of 3 cakes sliced in half to make 6 layers. I ended up opting for 9.5 inch cake tin, so I made two cakes and four layers instead. Next time, I think I will try for the 6 layers just because that’s even more coconut flavour!
The top layer has a thick layer of cream cheese buttercream and I really liked the interplay of pastry cream and cream cheese buttercream. Made this cake for a group gathering, and it was demolished!
Note: The only thing that I would try differently next time is making the cake the night before. I found that the bottom layer got just a touch gummy because it needed more time to cool.
The pastry cream needs to be refrigerated until completely cool, but it sets up quite firm. I gave it good whisk when I took it out of the fridge and it loosened up just enough to spread.