For The Cake Slice this month we made Pina Colada cake; a brown sugar cake with a coconut flavored frosting and a pineapple filling. Dave and I both love pineapple and coconut, so I had high hopes for this cake. Sadly, I goofed up when I made the frosting, and instead of this cake being a vision of pineapple-y/coconut-y loveliness, it was rather a big mess that Dave affectionately nicknamed "the beast", because the more I tried to fix it, the larger and messier it got.
The problem was that I made the frosting in the kitchen in the middle of the day when it was much too warm. My butter was much too soft. This frosting is meringue based, and apparently, it is very important that your butter be a specific temperature. I learned this after my frosting disaster by consulting the genius book, The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. According to the book, "A word of caution: If the butter is too soft or the room too hot, what could have been a satin-smooth cream breaks down into a grainy hopeless puddle". That's exactly what happened to me--a grainy, hopeless puddle. I should have scrapped the first batch of frosting and started over, but instead I tried to "repair" it by adding some powdered sugar and grated coconut. Not a huge success. The frosting tasted fine, but it kept sliding off the cake. Even as I was trying to take a photo of the completed cake, the frosting was sliding down the sides like molten lava. It was quite funny actually. 
Both the cake itself, and the filling were both delicious and things I would like to make again, though next time I think I'll go with a simple cream cheese frosting--cream cheese and pineapple go well together.
The recipe for this cake comes from Sky High: Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes by Alisa Huntsman and Peter Wynne. You can find the complete recipe here: http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dg5mng3t_76gsvmfp6x&revision=_latest
Please visit the Cake Slice blogroll to see some of the more successful versions of this cake! http://thecakeslicebakers.blogspot.com/
Still looked good though. :)
ReplyDeleteI love the presentation, and think it looks delicious!
ReplyDeleteYUM. It sounds delicious. I love pina colada.
ReplyDeleteYour name for the cake makes me laugh! I aced the frosting this month, but I'm guessing it was just a fluke and that I'll be back to troubled frostings next month! I agree 100% that a good cream cheese frosting would be much better on this cake. AND, my frosting turned out great but was super greasy. It was sloshing all over inside my mixer bowl in a very weird way. I think it was the coconut milk. So maybe that added to your slippery frosting! Anywho...
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that cream cheese or better, pineapple cream cheese frosting would be awesome on this cake. Despite what it looks like, I bet it tasted great!
ReplyDeleteThe beast looks like a giant snowball. Does look tasty!
ReplyDeleteThank you for all the comments!
ReplyDeleteI think it looks fabulous...just a bit hard to cut. The meringue frosting sounds soooo yummy
ReplyDeleteIt was good but a BIG mess.
ReplyDelete