Sunday, July 15, 2007

Hawaiian Wedding Cake


This recipe is called Hawaiian Wedding cake (a.k.a. When recipes don't work out!) I spotted this recipe in the Family Circle magazine we got free from our hotel in Ohio. It sounded absolutely delicious! It combines some of my favorite flavors… coconut, pineapple, and walnuts and wraps it up in a delightful looking cake. Sounds wonderful! So, despite my lack of love for baking, I thought I'd try it out. However, I had some serious problems making this one...

For starters, I thought there was a lot of sugar in the recipe, but since I'm not a baker, I made a very deliberate decision to follow the recipe exactly. Second, after the cake started baking, it looked like the batter was actually CARAMELIZING. Not good for cakes. I noticed later I had accidentally used pineapple IN HEAVY SYRUP. Maybe that was my problem? I'm not sure I even knew that pineapple could come in different syrup/water.

After I took the cakes out, they hadn't risen much, and the bottom of the round cake I had made, actually had a heavy layer of what looked like caramel soaking the bottom. We won't even begin to describe the texture...

This whole experience reminds me of the time I made homemade brownies in college. They puffed up about 4 inches over the top, spilled over and burned. Turns out the flour I had borrowed from a roommate was "self rising" and it already had the baking soda in it. After that, I started buying brownie mixes.

There is one redeeming feature to this cake... the homemade cream cheese frosting. It was pretty good - it almost made one of those cupcakes edible. Now I need to find something to go with it... good thing I keep plenty of cake mixes on hand.

Hawaiian Wedding Cake

2 c. Flour
2 c. Sugar
2 tsp. Baking Soda
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 can (20 oz.) crushed pineapple with juice, undrained
1 c. Shredded Coconut
1 c. walnuts, coarsely chopped

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 stick unsalted butter
4 oz. cream cheese
2 c. powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Heat oven to 325. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients together with a wooden spoon until just combined. Spoon the mixture into a prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes.

In a separate bowl, beat butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add sugar and vanilla until smooth. Top cooled cake.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Unknown said...

Sure, James. No problem.