The Food of Love

Since I finally organized my pictures from my Christmas baking exploits, I figured it's time to share.

This is sort of a tale of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Since I'm all about inverting expectations, I'll cover the ugly first.

First, a back story. When I was little, every year at Christmas my great-grandmother would make this fabulous coconut cake. We're talking amazing, bakery-quality stuff. She'd crack open a real coconut, spread the icing just so, and apparently would even use tons of toothpicks to make the layers stand right. After she died, my dad's mom attempted to re-create the masterpiece. It sadly never lived up to the memory, always tending to fall on the dry side.

Well, this year I decided to try my hand at the famous cake. I will preface the following pictures to say that this cake was absolutely delicious, if a bit too sweet. I subbed coconut milk for regular which was a bit much. I'll go half and half next time. Also, I didn't use real coconut, but I'm not sure that made too much of a difference. The real problem with this cake was the absolute disaster that came from trying to get it out of the pan and standing up. Mom tried to dump it out, with little success. Still. It was not dry. This was almost more of a coconut cake soup than anything. Here's the recipe and the pictures. Look for my second go next year. I will not be defeated!