Leela’s “Sweet Six” Strawberry Coconut Cake

You might be asking yourself what the heck is “Sweet Six?” Is Marla gonna add six health boosting, good for you ingredients into a cake? How about six different heirloom varieties of organic strawberries? No. None of that. “Sweet Six” refers to my sweet six year old, and the very sweet thing that she is not yet a “sweet sixteen!”

My formula is quite simple when it comes to treats:

As long as we are within range of our healthy eating plan 95% of the time we get occasional wiggle room to indulge the other 5% of the time. So that means lean, mindful, nutrient dense foods for the majority of the time. The other 5% of the time is reserved for dreamy treats. At my kids birthday parties, I take a good inventory of my cravings and bake up a spectacular cake based on those cravings.

A question was posed to me the other day “I bet you used really healthy ingredients, right?” uh, it depends upon your definition of “healthy.”

My answer went something like this…..I created a birthday cake with all of the wonderful ingredients one should be allowed to eat on special occasions. Yes, the cake had butter, whole milk, chocolate, flour, and gasp……refined sugar.

IT WAS A CAKE!!! A real one! As much as I respect restrictive diets for allergic reasons and other dietary concerns, my family thankfully doesn’t have those issues, so a GREAT BIG REAL CAKE it was. I told you that when I indulge, I indulge! When I bake I still practice mindful cooking behaviors: the individual ingredients need to hold up to certain standards. Ideally they need to be as fresh, organic and clean as possible.

I have a wonderful collection of cookbooks, for this cake I adapted recipes from:

The Cake Book by Tish Boyle

adding my own twists here and there.

When quizzed about what she wanted in her birthday cake my daughter gave me some loose rules.

“I want a strawberry cake.”

I interpreted that as: Craft what you wish just make sure there are strawberries somewhere. So I went off and created a cake with my taste buds calling the shots.

Leela’s “Sweet Six” Strawberry Coconut Cake

The recipe I am providing makes Two 9 inch cake layers or One half sheet ( jelly roll pan.) The frosting and filling recipes are for this size cake.

I doubled everything in this recipe for Leela’s birthday cake, frostings and fillings as well. I needed 4 layers, each 1/2 sheet was cut in half lengthwise to get my four layers.

(If you want to be more mindful, go ahead and source Organic ingredients wherever you can. Yes, even in your layer cake!)

Coconut Cake Layers

3 1/4 cups A/P flour (remove 3 Tbs)

3 tbs Potato or Corn Starch (the addition of this gives you a nice tender crumb, it’s OK if you don’t want to use starch just use all the 3 1/4 cups flour)

3/4 tsp salt

1 tbs Baking Powder

2 Sticks (1 Cup) Unsalted Butter, softened

1 1/2 cups Granulated Sugar (yeah, you know that refined white stuff we try to keep away from!)

6 Large Egg Whites

2 tsp Pure Vanilla extract

2/3 cup Milk

2/3 cup unsweetened Coconut Milk

1 cup sweetened Flaked Coconut (make sure you have extra if you want to add to sides of cake)

Method:

1. Position racks to middle of oven. Pre-heat to 350˚. Line baking sheets with parchment or grease with some butter.
2. Sift Flour, Baking Powder, Starch and Salt into bowl. Combine with a whisk.
3. Grab your electric mixer and paddle attachment. Beat softened butter at medium high speed until creamy, about 30 seconds.
4. Slowly add the sugar and beat about 2 minutes until light and fluffy. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add egg whites one at a time. Beat well after each addition and scrape down sides when necessary.
5. Add vanilla extract.
6. Slow down your mixer to low speed. Grab your flour mixture and milk mixture and add in intervals, flour then milk. Alternate flour three times and milk two. Keep the mixer speed on low as contents will splash if speed is too high. Mix until flour is just combined, you don’t want to toughen up batter.
7. Fold in Flaked Coconut with spatula.
8. Put the batter into greased pan(s), smooth tops with spatula.
9. Bake cake(s) for about 25-30 minutes. Test doneness with a toothpick. When inserted, the toothpick should come out clean. Edges of cake(s) should be lightly browned.
10. Let cakes cool and then invert carefully to take out of pan.

Strawberry Jam

I used a jar of Trader Joe’s Strawberry preserves. You can use fruit sweetened or regular jam here. For the two 1/2 sheets I used about 16 oz of jam. If you go smaller you will need less, maybe about 8 ounces.

Milk Chocolate Cream Cheese Filling

3.5 Ounces high quality Milk Chocolate, broken into pieces

1 lb Softened Cream Cheese

1 tbs Lemon Juice

1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract

1 2/3 cup Confectioners’ Sugar

Method:

1. Melt the Milk Chocolate over barely simmering water in a double boiler, stir frequently. Remove from heat when melted and set aside to cool a bit.
2. In your electric mixer with paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese for about 1 minute on medium speed until smooth and creamy.
3. Add Milk Chocolate and beat until blended.
4. Add Lemon Juice, Vanilla Extract and Confectioners’ sugar.
5. Mix until well blended.
6. Turn mixer speed to High and beat until smooth, creamy and fluffy, about 1 minute.

Frosting needs to be at room temperature before using. You can store it in the refrigerator for about 3 days if you want to prepare it ahead of time.

Cream Cheese Frosting

You are basically doing the same thing as the above Milk Chocolate Cream Cheese Filling except you omit the chocolate and add some food coloring of choice. I added a few drops of red coloring on step 4.

1 lb Softened Cream Cheese

1 tbs Lemon Juice

1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract

1 2/3 cup Confectioners’ Sugar

Food Coloring of choice

Method:

1. In your electric mixer with paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese for about 1 minute on medium speed until smooth and creamy.
2. Add Lemon Juice, Vanilla Extract and Confectioners’ sugar.
3. Mix until well blended.
4. Turn mixer speed to High and beat until smooth, creamy and fluffy, about 1 minute.

Frosting needs to be at room temperature before using. You can store it in the refrigerator for about 3 days if you want to prepare it ahead of time.

Vanilla Simple Syrup

If you want to make sure that your cake remains nice and moist go ahead and boil up a batch of Simple Syrup.

3/4 cup Water

1/2 cup Granulated Sugar

1 Tbs Vanilla Extract (You can use whatever flavor extract you would like to infuse your cake with. Lemon, Almond or Coconut extract would also be yummy)

Method:

• Boil water and sugar together in a small saucepan over medium heat.
• Let cool.
• Stir in the extract of choice.

Cake Assembly

Cake layers should be cooled.

Frostings should be ready to go.

Jam available.

1. Choose a plate or cake board.
2. Trim cake to desired size.
3. Lay down first cake layer, add a layer of Jam,then a layer of Milk Chocolate Cream Cheese filling.
4. Continue adding layers with Frosting and Jam, leave the top layer bare (no goo here guys.)
5. When all of your layers are stacked, take a heaping spoonful of your Cream Cheese Frosting and put it in another container.
6. With an offset spatula apply a “Crumb Coat” to your cake. This is a very thin layer of frosting that seals the cake and prevents the crumbs from exposing themselves in your finished coat of frosting. Placing the crumb coat frosting in a separate container will prevent the rest of your frosting from getting contaminated with crumbs.
7. Crumb Coating is easier when your cake is firmer, so placing it in the freezer or fridge for a bit can help. My cake was too large to fit in my fridge. It worked out very well regardless.
8. When cake is completely sealed in the crumb coat, it is ready to be frosted!
9. When frosting is complete, you can take handfuls of Sweetened Coconut or Sprinkles and press them gently on to the edges of the cake.

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Where did that candy come from?

Thought you were curious!

They recently opened a vintage inspired candy store out our way called Powell’s Sweet Shoppe. Great stuff, adorable atmosphere!

Tagged as: birthday cake, butter, coconut cake, coconut flake, coconut milk, Powell's Sweet Shoppe, strawberry jam, The Cake Book, Tish Boyle, vanilla extract