Old Fashioned Coconut Cake, Best Old Fashioned Southern Cooks

Boy, nothing was as popular at Christmastime than this fresh coconut cake Mama made. Hey y'all, it's Tammy with Collard Valley Cooks, and this is where we cook like Mama did. This is my Mama's coconut cake. It's a fresh coconut cake with her snow white layers. Has cream of coconut and coconut milk in it. Oh, is it gonna be good? It's so juicy you have to put it in a pie plate. Hey y'all, it's Tammy with Collard Valley Cooks. You can hear the birds singing this morning in my kitchen. We are using white lily flour and making my Mama's recipe for white cake. We use all egg white so that it's a pretty snow white cake, and we always make these layers for our fresh coconut cake for Christmas every year. We're gonna get started. We're adding our shortening and butter. So we're gonna start with a stick of butter, which is a half cup. So here's a half cup of shortening. Now we're gonna add our sugar. It's a cup and 3 quarters. I reduce the sugar in my cakes lots of times because you put so much sugar on the outside of them. There's really no need for them to be super sweet. So we're gonna use about a cup and 3 quarters and we're gonna get this mixed up and then we're gonna add our egg whites. With all mixers, it's good to scrape it in between. Now we're adding 6 egg whites. See how creamy that looks now? My mama would have called that a little bit frothy. Because we use white lily flour, it's nice and fluffy. It's a white winter wheat. There's no need for me to sift it and since I'm not sifting, I go ahead and I put in my baking powder, my salt and my soda into the cake at this point. So we're gonna use 2 teaspoons of baking powder, a half teaspoon of baking soda and a half teaspoon of salt. We're gonna get that mixed in good before we add our flour. We're gonna use 1 1⁄2 cups of buttermilk. This is whole buttermilk. I like it because it's nice and thick. Makes a really good cake. All right, we're gonna be putting in 2 teaspoons of vanilla flavoring and then we'll be adding our buttermilk and our flour alternately. We'll be using 2 1⁄2 cups of flour and 1 1⁄2 cups of buttermilk and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. I have to tell y'all because when I turn this mixer on, you can't hear me. We're gonna scrape the sides, get it mixed up about 30 more seconds. You want to mix a cake mix about 2 minutes and that's about it because that flour starts reacting with that baking powder. Nothing reminds me of my mother more than cake batter. My mother catered to weddings and she was a wonderful cake decorator and we were around cake mix and icing our whole life. And of course we got to lift the bowl and she made tons of cake batter. This is her recipe for white layers and boy is it good. Now if you want to make a yellow layer and you want to use the yellows of the eggs, I have a different recipe for that cake that mama made. All right, we're gonna get these in our pans and I'm gonna bake this in the oven at 325 degrees because I don't want it to get real brown. You want your white, snow white, fresh coconut cake to be beautiful and white on the inside. So you don't want to bake your cake and have it dark on the outside. You want it to be really pretty. All right, today I'm going all out in greasing and flouring my pans instead of spraying them with Baker's Joy because it's Christmas and that's how mama done it. So that's how I'm gonna do it today. I miss her. My mom passed away a couple years ago. She had dementia, oh let's see, about eight years before she passed away and she had an autoimmune disease and so I was sad to see her go, but I know where she's at and that makes me very happy because I know she's with her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ this Christmas. And every day we're gonna take some shortening and grease these pans. Make sure you use your fingertips to get around them edges. Now, I love these pans. They're Nordic Ware and they do a really good job of browning the cake and it not get too dark or too, you know, you take a little bit of flour and sprinkle in one and then you let it go around the pan. So you're just gonna pat it all around the bottom and then you're gonna turn it on its side and let the flour go around the edge like that and beat it out good so that you don't have a lot of flour in the corners. Now my cake mixes that are in our first cookbook, they all have about two and a half cups of flour. That is too much batter for two 8-inch layers. It would work for two nines. It'll work in a sheet cake pan. But if you're using rounds and you're using 8 inches, make sure you use at least three layers. Okay, and a note for this too. A lot of people make my pound cake. It's wonderful, but it makes a lot of cake batter. And so if you've got a standard bundt pan, there's too much batter in it as well. You have to use the 12 cup one. Just a heads up to keep in mind when you're using my recipes, I give you lots of batter because I'm gonna tell you these boxes just don't cut it anymore. They keep reducing and reducing the amount of cake batter you get. And so it's much better to use that white lily flour and make your own cake mixes. All right, so we're gonna use four today because I want this to be a nice tall showy cake. And I'm gonna put a heaping cup in each one. Once they all have this cup, then I'll just try to give the rest in here equally. A little bit, a little bit, a little bit, and I always like to save a bite for me. Yes, I eat my cake batter. That's what reminds me of mama the most. So just spread it around in your pan. Good. Now mama always beat hers on the counter to get all the air bubbles out, especially if you're using a hand mixer, it puts more air in the cake batter. So we're gonna do that today. My dogs may bark. I only had a few little bubbles that popped on the top. There's one that's about to pop. But you can do that. Everybody will have a different amount in there. If you don't over beat your cake, the less air will be in there. Also, try to use a paddle if you've got a stand mixer. Are we gonna get these in the oven? Now I do have my rack not in the center of the oven because I like to video the time-lapse for you guys. But if you're making these at home, then you would have them more centered. But this oven does a wonderful job. So I'm not worried about that. It is a gas oven and the back will get a little bit warmer than the front so they may get done quicker. So don't overcook the ones on the back and let them get too dark if you do it like I'm doing it. All right, my layers on the back are done and the ones on the front just need a couple of more minutes. It doesn't hurt to take a cake out quick and put it back in. You can see it's already pulling away from the sides. It's really done. It's just not as dark as the other ones. I'm gonna go ahead and take them out. If your cake is pulling away from the sides like you can see here, then you know it's done and you can really tell the difference in the ones in the back from the ones in the front. Now when you make yours at home, you could use two different racks or cook them at different times, but today for time's sake, I just cooked them all at one time on one rack for y'all. Now once these cool down about 10 minutes or so and they get cool to the, not cool, but cool enough that you can pick up the sides without getting burned. It's still gonna be warm. We're gonna flip them out on some parchment paper and we're gonna go ahead and start mixing up our icing for this coconut cake. We're out in the sun room. I'm gonna flip these out out here and let them start cooling down because it is cooler in this room. Nice fluffy white cake. Okay, we're gonna be using cream of coconut. Now cream of coconut is not the same thing as coconut milk. Coconut milk is thin and watery. Cream of coconut has the fat of the coconut in it and it's creamy and most of the time when you open it it's got a layer of fat on the top. So we're gonna open this up. This is a 15 ounce can and this recipe is actually in our first cookbook because this is a very common thing that I make every Christmas and I made this my first cookbook right around before Christmas. The first year that I started the show. This is it. So we're gonna follow the directions on there. We're gonna open this cream of coconut and we're gonna put it in a bowl because I want the grease to be mixed up in in the cream of coconut, too. So you want to get it good and creamy and mixed together good and I'm gonna take my whisk and I'm just gonna mix it really good together. Get that fat in there. We're gonna use 3 quarter cups of this in our icing and then the rest of it we're gonna put in our fresh coconut. This full pretty much or close to full is 3 quarters of a cup. And that's how much we're gonna need in our icing. Seems like a lot, doesn't it? But now I like my icing really thin for this and we're gonna take the rest of this and we're gonna put it in our coconut. I'm about to show you what kind of coconut this is. Y'all just give me a second. So get all of it out and into your coconut and now you're gonna use about 3 quarter cups of lukewarm water and you're gonna put in the coconut, too. Don't use hot water because coconut sour is really easy and this is fresh coconut. This cake has to be refrigerated. I'm just rinsing out the rest of this cream of coconut. Make sure I get it all and we're gonna pour this in here. Now we are using Birdseye fresh coconut. You find it in the freezer section near the Cool Whip. These are small packages. So you need six of these. They're six ounces to make a good coconut cake if you want to put plenty of coconut on it, which I like. Now do not make sure that when you thaw these you put them in the refrigerator two or three days before you want to use them and do not thaw them in the microwave. It'll cause the coconut to sour. Now we're going to take the coconut and we're gonna mix up the water and the cream of coconut in it. This is really cold and it should be so I'm gonna have to go back and forth and rinse my hands with hot water just so they don't freeze to death. It's really not soupy enough for me. I'm gonna actually open up this coconut milk and pour a little bit in here. This is a part of the recipe, but y'all are getting an even better tip watching today. All right. I didn't know it, but this coconuts actually sweetened already. It tastes really good, but it's just up to you whether or not you can taste your coconut, see if it's sweetened and if it's not you can always add a little sugar water to it instead of just the plain water. It's totally up to you. All right, we're gonna make our buttercream. We're gonna start with a half stick of room-temperature butter. We're gonna start with a half stick of butter that's at room temperature. We've got our 3 quarter cups of our cream of coconut and we're gonna put this in here. I'm gonna save out just a little bit just to make sure that it's not gonna be too runny. We're gonna use a couple of teaspoons of this vanilla. Or at least one. Now we're gonna turn this on and add powdered sugar. We're gonna be using around 4 cups of powdered sugar and you want this icing to be thin because it's just good on the cake that way. I think it's better than it being thick with this coconut on there. We're gonna start adding our 4 cups of powdered sugar. Add the rest of my and this is the last cup of powdered sugar makes it 4. Okay, when I do a fresh coconut cake mine is soupy enough that I use something to catch the goodness. Okay, I never just put it on a flat cake plate. You can use a paper doily like you see here and then place your cake on top of it if you use a clear pie plate and it's still gonna be pretty on the table. So I just thought I'd tell you guys that because if you put this on a flat cake plate, it's gonna run. The juices are gonna run out of it and you don't want a sticky mess in the car or on the ride to wherever you're going or even in your refrigerator. So we're gonna start out with the pie plate. This is just a standard 9-inch anchor Hawking pie plate. And we're gonna start with our first cake layer. Place it in the bottom and you can see how fresh this cake looks. It is going to be divine. And remember for every layer that you plan to do, like if you're only gonna do a two-layer cake, you're not gonna need so much coconut, but you can really pile it in between them. Okay, so you're gonna put your layer down. You're gonna use your buttercream and put a thin layer of buttercream and if you freeze your cake layers, they'll be a lot easier to ice. Mine are very fresh. I just made them this morning and they have not cooled down even all the way. I mean, they're cool, but they're not cold. So I can ice cake like that, but I wouldn't suggest you do it if if you're not, you know an inexperienced cake icer. Make sure you got it stacked on there in the middle and then you're gonna take this beautiful coconut and put on top of it. And you're gonna do every layer that way. This coconuts nice and moist and got plenty of juice in it. And I really use a lot of coconut, y'all. I don't skimp. This is my last one. Isn't that pretty already? Now to do this one, I'm gonna put plenty of icing on the top. The thinner the icing is, the easier it's gonna be to to ice the cake as well. So you can also make it a little bit thinner if you want to. I just take the icing and I push it over the edge to do the sides. As soon as you get this cake iced, it needs to go in the refrigerator. And this cake is best after it's set in the refrigerator for about two or three days. Even if it sits in there a week, it's fine and better that way. Now this icing don't have to be thick because we're gonna pile it on top with coconut just a little bit left. So we're gonna try to get it on the sides. All right, let's fill this thing full of coconut. I'll get it nice and flat on the top. Get this little edge off of it. All right. It's about to be a beauty. We're gonna put our coconut on the top. Boy, nothing was as popular at Christmastime than this fresh coconut cake mama made. Now when I was a really young girl, she would make 70-minute icing and use 70-minute icing, but over the years I have tweaked it and tweaked it until this is just my favorite way of making this cake. Easiest way to do sides of a cake is to pick it up, hold it over the bowl, and I know you got to be strong to do it, but it's the easiest way to do it. And then take your coconut and you just got to mash it on there because it's wet. Y'all can hear how wet it is by listening to it in between my hands. And I had just enough. You really want at least let's see, we had three. Yeah, you at least need two or three for the sides and one for in between the layers. It's according to how many layers you're gonna have. So I'm usually safe and just use six. That's my coconut cake. Now it's taller than that because it's down in this 9-inch. If you make this cake with 9-inch layers, you can't put it in a pie plate. You're gonna have to find something else to put it in. Are y'all ready? We're gonna cut this cake and it has not been refrigerated yet, and it is so fresh. We just made the cake a few minutes ago and put this thing together. So when it falls to pieces, don't be surprised. I'm gonna try my best to get a piece out of here without it just falling apart. But I want y'all to see the layers. I want you to see the coconut and see how it looks on a plate. And of course, it would be more solid looking after you refrigerate it. It is so moist. The knife just goes right down in there real quick. That bottom layer is kind of stuck down in the in the pan. So you didn't hardly see it. Here's the good stuff. It was left in the bottom. Y'all can see the layers and how good it looks. We're gonna try this cake. It's already delicious and it's not even soaked in the refrigerator yet. Whoo, that's a good cake y'all. I love my mama and I loved her cooking. Thanks for watching Collard Valley Cooks, where we cook like mama did and we use our white lily flower like mama did too. Bye y'all. Love ya.