Spring is finally here. The robins are bobbing along. Sunshine is warm on your face. Easter is just around the corner. Will you be making Easter dinner this year? I am responsible for Easter dinner in my family and, of course, dessert is an essential part of the meal. I don't know about you, but when Spring and Easter arrive, I get really hungry for all things coconut. Maybe it relates back to the homemade coconut Easter eggs that my mom made when I was a kid, but when I am planning dessert for Easter, I gravitate to coconut. Fortunately, everyone in my family loves coconut as much as I do.
In year's past, I have made coconut cupcakes, coconut cookies with bittersweet chips and white cake with coconut frosting. This year, I am trying a new recipe that I found online - Coconut Cream Cake. Doesn't that sound delicious?? Bridget Edwards of Bake at 350 wrote about this cake in her blog post on March 16, 2015. Bridget's post contains a link to her recipe which she generously shared with the world in her guest post on the web site for Imperial Sugar.
Bridget notes in her blog post that the secret to this cake's soft, moist texture and coconutty goodness is cream of coconut. I've never used this ingredient before but I resolved to find it because I just have to make this cake. Like Bridget, I found cream of coconut in the beverage aisle of the supermarket with other drink mixers like tonic water and club soda. I was surprised to see not one but several brands of cream of coconut in my store. Apparently, cream of coconut is one of the primary ingredients in a pina colada. I bought the Coco Lopez brand which is the same brand that Bridget showed in her blog post.
Some of the ingredients for Bridget Edwards' Coconut Cream Cake.
Bridget's recipe for Coconut Cream Cake calls for coconut extract and sweetened shredded coconut in addition to the cream of coconut. With all of those layers of coconut flavor, how can this cake be anything but awesome? It looks so scrumptious in the photos on Bridget's blog post; I can't wait to make it. I'll let you know how it turns out.
If you have never visited Bridget Edwards' blog, Bake at 350, I encourage you to do so. Bridget's sugar cookie designs are beautiful and her cookie recipes? Well, they are just sublime. In fact, Bridget's vanilla-almond sugar cookie recipe is my favorite. I also use Bridget's recipe for royal icing which I flavor with almond extract. Bridget, we have never met but I hope that our paths cross one day. We are birds of a feather, you and I, and I would love to chat with you sometime about cookies, baking and other things which make life sweet.