Cake #12 Fresh Coconut Layer Cake

Fresh Coconut!  Oh fun!  I picked this cake.  For my birthday.  This will be the only year I volunteer to make my own birthday cake - okay, maybe it won't be, I do like to bake cakes.  This cake looks fresh and white and elegantly festive.  Plus, we got to buy fresh coconuts and learn how to crack them open.

I scoffed at Mindy when she said she was sick of 3 layer cakes.  Well, truth is, she was just 2 cakes ahead of me in coming to this realization.  None of my tupperware supports 3 layer cake pieces so the leftover pieces I transport are big globs of mush.

So many lessons from this cake.  #1, If I make it again, I do not need to use fresh coconut.  Grating it is cumbersome - even though I cheated and used the Cuisinart - I like fresh bagged store bought coconut and I think the consistency would be better.  If I had hand grated it, it might have been finer, but it would have also contained nicks and knuckle parts.

#2 the frosting was glop - too gooey.  Very marshmallowy, but did not hold shape.  Could be fun to use again.

#3 the cake was the whitest I have ever made.  That seemed cool.  It looked like a wedding cake.  That could be worth making again.

#4 I should not try to write about cakes a month after I made them.

This smashed mess below is why I chose to use the Cuisinart to shred the coconut.  I did skip the step about baking the coconuts first...I wonder if that would have had an impact...

Oh right, my middle layer is 8" and the upper and lower are 9".  I thought I would just make up for it with frosting, and I did.   The cake was heavier than the frosting, so the middle layers basically just absorbed the frosting after this first piece was cut.