Coconut Cake

This time around you get 2 for 1.

My husband LOVES coconut.  Every year for his birthday he requests a german chocolate cake.  Every year I offer to try something new and he declines.  He wants german chocolate for the coconut.  This year, for our anniversary, I wanted to make him a very coconutty cake.  I went with Rose Levy Beranbaum's Southern Coconut cake.  With lots of coconut milk, coconut extract, fresh coconut (not the dried and sweetened kind) and coconut rum this was about as coconutty as I could do.  This cake was my first venture into Silk Meringue Buttercream and, believe me, THAT was well worth the effort.  He loved his cake and I generously helped him eat it. I couldn't expect the poor guy to eat the whole thing by himself could I?

There it is, all neatly composed.

And here's a little peek inside.  See that beautiful texture and the sinful looking buttercream?  Oh yes, it tasted even better than it looks!

Here comes the 2 for 1 part.  After I leveled the cakes I set the tops aside.  Something this delicious should never go to waste so I stashed them in the fridge for a day or two and then made cake balls.  YUM!  I crumbled up the cake and moistened it with the Silk Meringue Buttercream and a little coconut rum.  This divine mix got rolled into balls, dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with some of the remaining coconut.  You want to eat these, trust me!

Prep work for cake balls.

Drying and dripping in rows.

All finished and ready to eat!