School of coconut cake

Here's my takeaway from coconut cake class:
1. Coconut pastry cream is a good thing.
2. Never feel guilty about a cake mix.

Let me explain. First, until it came time to assemble the cakes at the very end, this class wasn't hands-on. We stood in the pastry kitchen for 3 hours watching the instructor make a yellow cake, pastry cream, coconut syrup and whipped cream. Don't get me wrong, that's a good learning method although I wasn't sure why we were supposed to bring an apron and our own cake pan.

Baking is science and art. If you bake from scratch, especially cakes, then you know the slightest thing can cause a major flop. So we watched the instructor mix up a batter for a plain white cake with a recipe that called for a cup of egg whites and a large amount of butter. The room was chilly, the butter was chilly. She expressed concern that the batter (despite being whipped to death in a KitchenAid) wasn't quite right when she poured it in the little pans. It did look a bit grainy.

We weren't worried because she was the expert. She gave each one a hard smack and twirl on the counter to "even it out." That seemed like harsh treatment for an egg white batter. Never mind, into the oven they went.

The 15 minute timer went off. She looked in, she didn't look happy. She closed the door and reset the timer. I knew the feeling. Several had already boiled over, but worse-- all were sunk down in the middle. Finally they came out and life went on. She cut them out of the pans (they stuck like glue) and put them "good side up" to cool while she finished the meringue and pastry cream.

Honestly, I'm not a mean person or one to gloat. But it was somehow reassuring that a professional pastry chef could pull something out of the oven that looked like one my own dismal scratch baking attempts. We picked the hard baked bits off the sheet and made polite comments. We all know the universe is not a fair place.

On to the good part. Pastry cream is that magical filling in chocolate eclairs, tarts, cakes, cream puffs and cream pies. It's basically just a very rich cooked custard, and her recipe added coconut cream (not milk) that made it especially luscious. This was the filling for the cake after the crumbly slices were brushed with a "simple syrup." The choice of icing was either plain whipped cream or a tricky cooked meringue that looked like more trouble and heartache:

I choose whipped cream, and slathered it lavishly on my little cake. Whipped cream hides everything. It was fun at the end of the class to actually be doing something. The only problem with these "icings" is that the cake needs to consumed pretty much the day you make it. So this major cake is for a holiday dessert, or something you would make for a big hungry family to devour in one sitting. Coconut cake is very popular in the South at church suppers and such.

John was sound asleep when I got home last night, so I put the sad looking little cake in the fridge. No guarantees on that whipped cream when he gets around to eating it after work today.

I get an A for effort. But when I got home, I realized in the fuss of cleaning up the kitchen I forgot my recipe sheet for the marvelous cake. That's OK, I know where to find a Betty Crocker Yellow Butter Recipe Cake Mix.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Woody Allen