.: Coconut Cake

Mmm. Coconut. I have become slightly obsessed with coconut lately. Macaroons are my new favorite cookie, and almond joy has out beat Carmelo bars as my new favorite candy bar. Hall decided for his birthday dinner he wanted traditional southern fare. We normally do not eat this way, well we normally eat southern food, but not clog your arteries southern food. What do you want I asked? He quickly responded with (as he'd been pondering this for quite a few days) fried chicken, butter beans, corn bread, creamed corn, collards, fried okra, and coconut cake. Okay. Let's start working out now so we can accomodate all this food. ;) The dinner went off without a hitch. I'll share some of my favorite ways to prepare these southern classics in the next few posts. But the coconut cake, oh the coconut cake. What a disaster! Haha.

I wanted to go all out. And by all out I mean buy a coconut, break it open, shred it etc. And go all out I did. I used Alton Brown's Recipe as I had seen him prepare this very cake on his show and I put it in my back pocket and let it simmer for a while promising myself I would try this. As a baker and chef I like to challenge myself. This coconut cake was the magnum opus. And boy do I need to try again! The cake tasted phenominal, but the texture was dense and thick, where it should have been light and fluffy. I think it boiled down to two things, not baking it long enough and overbeating my egg whites. The frosting and coconut on the exterior were great, no problems there it was in the texture of the actual cake. But since I took pics along the way, I'll share my miserable failure anyway ;)

I got the husk off by drilling two holes, draining the water, and baking the coconut for 15 minutes until it cracked. I used an oyster knife to shell the husk off of it.