Today we will be attempting to make a Coconut Cake, with 7-Minute Frosting. If you wish to see the recipe go to the Coconut Cake Recipe.

As you can follow the recipe yourself, it will serve no purpose for me to go through every step, so this rather lazy post will simply let the pictures tell the story, with only helping comments from me. I am quite exhausted from studying for my CLEP exam that is coming up on Thursday, and have very few brain cells left over for creative writing. (You know that for me to be so tired that I cannot write means I am dead tired!!!!) Pray for me on Thursday morning, that is when I take the test, and I need all the prayer I can get!

 
Have you ever milked a coconut? Neither had I, until this recipe called for coconut milk. (Not to be confused with coconut water, which is the actual name for the liquid inside the coconut…), It involves boiling milk and coconut, and then is squeezed through a tea towel. Our family ain’t exactly what ya would call “Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous” candidates, so we don’t have many tea towels laying around waiting to dry tea related items with, so I used a scrap of an old bed-sheet that I found in the rag box, seem to work just fine.

Mom came in to see how things were going, and she wanted to have her picture taken, so I obliged. She taught me how to cook, and was downright good at it too, though I try not to admit that to her directly very often. (Need to keep her humble, you see.)

Folding in the egg whites is down right tiring, it was almost too strenuous an exercise, and I was really feeling the burn by the end.

Thank you to Thomas for cutting out the parchment paper circles for the bottom of the cake pans, they were beautifully……..circular. (Putting parchment paper down in the bottom of the pans makes it really easy to get the cakes out of the pans, no more split-in-half cakes to mend with frosting!)

Cooks privilege, and one of my favorite aspects of cooking! (I shared with my cameraman.)

Into the oven they go. Our oven has decided to be obstinate lately, and refuses to have the temperature on the dial and the temperature inside the oven match. This poses a rather interesting situation in which we have no idea at which temperature the cake is baking. The recipe says 350 degrees, and so the oven is set to 425 degrees, as that is the dial placement that seems to coincide with the correct temperature; though, there is no thermostat, so this is a guesstimate in any case. Always makes for interesting cooking. Cooking time is quite arbitrary.

Cakes are out of the oven! Only took one hour and seven minutes. (The recipe said 40, but what does it know!) Now it is time to wash the first round of dishes. Remember the story of the Little Red  Hen? I firmly adhere to her principles, so everyone gets to help clean up. Don't they look so happy!

For some very strange reason the frosting did not fluff up as it was supposed to. It ended up as more of a thick drizzle, rather than the light meringue-esque frosting that was supposed to result. With a little research I found out that humid days will cause this result when working with boiled frostings. Looking outside revealed the fact that it was raining. That probably qualifies as humid… Oh, well. Still tasted good, so time to frost/drizzle the cake.

The prettiest view was from the top, so that is what you will see. Presentation is everything! As you can see, it looks rather nice.

Now for the real test, eating it! Nothing else matters if the taste is horrible.  I don’t appear to be choking, which is a good sign.

Flavor was really good. Consistency was not bad for a first time effort, next time is sure to be even better. Thomas gave it two thumbs up. (He also ate two pieces for breakfast the other day, and that is a telltale sign that it was edible.)

 
Thank you for joining us for “Mountain Top Cooking”. We would also like to  recognize our sponsor, the Hecat19 Endowment for the Arts, our camera-man Bubba aka. Matthew, and our fine cleanup team The Dish-washing Dervishes.

I'm Ben Hector wishing all of you good eating. Tune in next time to see more recipes soar like eagles, limp along like crippled seagulls, or crash and burn like a one winged duck…

Later!