living in the woods and making stuff

Maybe you could say that I am on a cake kick. Opportunities just keep popping up. It was my friend’s birthday last night. She had a roller skating birthday with a cake contest. I finished work around 5, and really wanted to bake a cake. I didn’t have a recipe with me in town, and my mom suggested that I just grab a mix…so I did.

I started with a Barefoot Contessa mix for coconut cupcakes, and added to it.

Instead of making cupcakes, I made two 8″ cakes, and then sliced them both in half to make 4 layers.

For some reason my kitchen becomes a disaster when I bake a cake. I was talking with my mom about it last night, and she was saying that it had to do with all the sugar all over the place. Maybe cakes are a collection of too much sugar.

I made a filling of Greek style yogurt, coconut passion fruit jam from France, and whipped cream (also my mom’s idea). I softly whipped the cream (1/2 cup) and gently folded in the yogurt (about 2/3 of a container), which is strained and quite firm. The mixture was quite tart, and so I added a lot of the jam to sweeten and flavor it. The cake itself was sweet, so I didn’t make the filling overly sweet.

Meanwhile, the cakes were on the porch cooling. The weather went from beautiful and sunny in the early afternoon, to cold, raining, and then snowing.

I put the coconut passion fruit filling in between the layers of the cake. I had a good amount of filling, which made the cake kind of tall. I was worried that it would drip over the sides, but it behaved itself. As the cake sat, a lot of the filling was absorbed by the layers.

I frosted the outside of the cake with cream cheese butter frosting (cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar from the baking mix “packet number 3”). I dusted the sides with coconut flakes (from “packet number 2”). For the top I put a layer of passion fruit coconut jam for brightness and color (also my mom’s idea).

This is my conclusion about cakes and mixes. My kitchen is still a mess, and I spent a lot of time. BUT, I didn’t have to think too much about things. It was fun. I had a cake where I probably wouldn’t have otherwise.