Cake Friday

 Perhaps it is the yearning for warmer weather, but I have had coconut on the brain this week. Our cruise is quickly approaching, but for the time being, I will have to settle for pictures of tropical beaches and coconut cake. I guess that is alright.

I used this recipe from Gluten Free Goddess for this cake. It is a bit different than many cake recipes; there is no need to whip the (vegan or otherwise) butter and sugar first, and the batter is so thick that it requires you to pat it down into the pan to get it flat. But for all the weirdness of preparation, the cake turned out quite nicely. The only change I made was adding a small amount of coconut extract to the cake batter instead of vanilla. My kids kept telling me how good it smelled while it was baking. It does not have a strong coconut flavor, but Brady said that it was just perfect.

The frosting is pretty nice too. It is also from Gluten Free Goddess. My only change to that is that I would probably make 1 1/2 batches of it next time since there was just barely not enough to get the piping done around the bottom of the cake. 

I bought the pretty organic coconut flakes from the health food store, poured them into a glass pie pan, and popped them into the oven at 400 degrees to toast them. I believe it took about 13 minutes, but I could be off since I was not really paying attention. I did make sure to check them every four minutes or so, and give them a little stir. When you can smell them, they are probably done.