Year of Cakes - Teatime Coconut Layer Cake

Was it really Martha time again?? It was indeed. We decided to make this month's Teatime Coconut Layer Cake to coincide with Mother's Day and my sister-in-law's birthday. There's no way Tiff & I could get through that much cake with our hubbies! And the cake certainly looked like a celebratory cake!

As usual, there was an ingredient we couldn't get our hands on - sweetened flaked coconut...so we improvised with shredded coconut mixed with icing sugar! We thought this cake was like the coconut version of January's lemon cake...very similar in technique & construction. That meant it was also going to be similar in duration to make ie. a marathon! (see January's attempt here). Because of this, I thought I might be clever and make the coconut meringue buttercream the night before...to buy us some time!

And so the following morning, we got straight into making the cakes...all 3 of them. I delegated the separation of 14 eggs to Tiff...much to her joy...not! An egg separator is the one kitchen gadget I don't have, but something tells me this is a Martha must-have! The cakes were pretty easy to make, but that's cos the Kitchenaid was doing all the work. Alas, she was working overtime beating all those egg whites! Next came the folding of the egg whites through the cake batter & thank goodness there were 2 of us to do this task....it was tiring on the arms:


While the cakes were baking, I proceeded to make the coconut syrup. No dramas here. The cakes came out of the oven puffed and golden and we let them cool. And this is where we had our 1st drama. When I took last night's buttercream out of the fridge, it was as hard as....butter! That's ok...Martha says to beat it, & we proceed to do so....but something's not right...it's still too hard & lumpy. We improvise & pop a portion of it in the microwave, then add it to the rest....uh-oh, big mistake - the coconut cream is separating from the cream! After some more patient beating, we manage to salvage it, even though it wasn't the right colour or consistency. While Tiff diligently attempted to spread it on the cake layers, I proceeded to make another batch...so much for buying time!

By this point, we were both a little despondent....which may explain the anti-Martha behaviour that followed. We couldn't be bothered to trim the cakes evenly (resulting in the lopsided final cake), nor could we be bothered with the numerous buttercream refrigeration stages (I think we only refrigerated once). And we didn't use nearly enough coconut syrup on the cake layers as instructed. Although as you can see below, we did relent to do a bit of vertical trimming:


After smoothing on the 2nd buttercream layer, Tiff piped on the wavy pattern on the outside. While she took Horlicks for a walk, I put on the finishing touches. All done & it was 6pm....at last! Here's the result:

Martha's Teatime Coconut Layer Cake:


Our Teatime Coconut Layer Cake:

And here is a slice:

The taste? The cake was moist from the syrup and had a subtle coconut flavour...the cake itself didn't seem too rich, as all the butter was in the buttercream...& that was rich! This has gotta be the highest cake I've ever made (15cm/6 inches high) and both our families were suitably impressed with the taste...and the size. They were heard to comment "This cake is bigger than your head", "This cake weighs more than your head", "It's so dense, I need 2 hands to slice it", "This is the best cake I have ever tasted!" Well, how are we gonna top that one?? N