The Great Coconut Dream Cake

Seven times. I had to bake this cake seven times to get it right and I’m super proud of how it’s FINALLY turned out 😄

This cake is everything anyone can dream of when thinking about a white or coconut cake. It’s SUPER soft, fluffy, moist, tender and rich and it’s just like biting into a deliciously flavoured coconut cloud. The cake is like a big, creamy pillow with a lovely scent of coconut and I’m just head over heels in love 🙂

Since this is such a wonderful cake, I really want to give you guys as many tips and pointers to help guide you all to making the most amazing coconut cake on earth. I don’t want to make this post too long either so let’s jump right in.

First of all, let’s talk white cake. I’ve been dying to find/create the most epic white cake since forever! I wanted it to have just the right cream like texture and be as authentic to white cakes as can be meaning using only all egg whites which is exactly what this cake is.

Now white cakes are easy to make but they can be tricky at times so I’m going to talk about some of the things I did to create this cake as well as some issues that people can face when making white cakes.

• The base of this cake uses cake flour. This is not plain/self rising/all purpose flour rather it’s a flour that’s very finely milled and has less protein than other flours. This produces a very light cake. If you can’t find cake flour, there is a great flour/cornflour substitute which works very well in most cakes but I had trouble with it here. The cake is so light that when I added cornflour, I ended up tasting it in the cakes which actually gave it a ‘paste-y’ feel 😯 so instead I used another technique of making cake flour which is just removing some of the plain flour after measuring. More on that in the directions 😉
• As far as the butter and sugars go we’ll be using the standard creaming method which just means that the butter and sugar gets whipped nice and creamy adding lots of air to the cake. Using this technique makes the cake super fluffy and light which is definitely the way to go here.
• I’ve omitted the egg yolks completely here which is a source of fat and to make up for this, I’ve added sour cream. Please make sure to use full fat sour cream and coconut milk because the cake needs the fat to build it’s structure.
• My technique of making the cake so airy is to whip the egg whites separately until soft peaks before adding to the batter.

Okay enough jibber jabber about that and let’s quickly go through the most popular issues that white cakes can cause:

1. Dense or hard cake. This is one of the most common issues I’ve seen people complain about. This is caused when there is too much liquid in the cake that the flour can’t absorb it all causing the cake to be over saturated and heavy. I tried my best to make sure that doesn’t happen here so the batter is slightly thick and very fluffy.
2. Cake sinking. This has a number of causes, a big one is opening the oven door too early. DO NOT open the oven door before 20 minutes of baking. Also make sure that your oven is well preheated before putting the cakes in. Under cooking the cakes can also result in sinking so make sure you cook it properly until a knife comes out with a few moist crumbs, no batter!, or clean.
3. Flat tops. This is caused if your baking powder is old so make sure of the expiration dates. Another cause for this is if the egg whites haven’t been whipped properly to stiff peaks. See more about that here.
4. Wet or dense bottom layer. This is a very annoying issue and one that many people have faced including myself. I know that this usually happens when A) there’s too much liquid in the batter or B) there’s not enough fat in the batter. I made sure that both of these wasn’t the cause. I realized that when I made the cake in a square cake dish it baked perfectly but when I made it in a round dish it had a thin wet layer at the bottom. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why and ended up thinking that this cake is just “shape-ist”. Then it dawned on me 😉 my square tin has higher sides so the amount of batter fit perfectly filling the tin just over half way. My round one has shorter sides and there was too much batter so the cake couldn’t cook properly. DO NOT over fill the cake tins so that the cakes cook up properly.

And finally, keep in mind that this cake may ever so slightly shrink from the sides. This is normal when baking an all egg white cake 🙂

Aight I’m done, at least for now I’ll talk more about all this in another post but for now, enjoy the most perfect coconut cake around. 🙂

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Alternative frosting:

Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

• 3/4 cup (150gms) butter
• 1 cup (8oz) cold cream cheese
• 2 – 3 cups (250 – 375gms) icing sugar
• 1 – 2 tablespoons coconut milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla or coconut extract

For the frosting

1. Whip butter and cream cheese together until smooth and creamy, about 2 to 3 minutes.
2. Add in icing sugar in 1/2 cup increments whisking between each addition. Add in coconut milk and more icing sugar until desired consistency is reached.
3. Add in vanilla or coconut to taste. Whisk in salt to taste to balance out the sweetness.

Updated on 30/11/2017.