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We were invited to dinner and asked to bring a dessert this past weekend. I like to take something new to dinner parties and I had recently played with a coconut cake idea/recipe that I was ready to fully put together. This cake is it friends! If you are a coconut lover (and I am) you will just very much enjoy this cake. I always check to make sure everyone likes coconut before I cook with it because my best friend hates the stuff! She gags at the slightest whiff of coconut. It cracks me up to see someone hate something so naturally sweet and delicious. I found this fantastic card, years back, that read "I am glad we can still be best friends despite our difference of opinion about coconut." and immediately bought it for her! The friends we dined with last night loved this cake and I hope you will too.
Double Coconut Cream Cake
1 C coconut milk (plus 1/2 C for soaking cakes)
1/2 C milk
2 sticks plus 2T butter
3C flour
4t baking powder
1t sea salt
6 eggs
3C sugar
2t vanilla
Preheat oven to 350, grease and flour 2 9" cake rounds. Heat milks and butter, in a saucepan until butter melts, remove from heat and set aside to cool to room temp. In a large bowl sift together dry ingredients and set aside. In a mixer, cream eggs and sugar until thick and pale yellow. With a spatula, stir dry ingredients in by hand and then add the cooled milk mixture. Combine completely and add vanilla. Pour into prepared pans and bake for 25 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in pans and completely on wire racks. Once cooled brush cakes with remaining coconut milk (I pierced tiny holes throughout the cakes and brushed them with the milk).
Frosting and Filling
2 1/2 sticks butter
4 C powdered sugar
1 t vanilla
2 T coconut milk
3/4 C sweetened coconut
Whip butter and powdered sugar until light and fluffy then add vanilla and milk (if needed, add more sugar to keep consistency). Add coconut and frost one layer of cake (adding a bit extra to the center to fill it and make it stack nicely). Place the top layer on the bottom layer and frost completely.
*While frosting the cake, toast 1 cup of sweetened coconut at 325 for 8 minutes to toast it and then sprinkle it on the freshly frosted cake.
"A Childhood Summer"The challenge for this month was to create a macaron capturing a favorite childhood/summertime memory. That is difficult. I had a happy childhood and summers full of slip-n-slides, ice cream trucks, slumber parties, movies with content far older than my little mind, digging for worms in the yard with my father, school clothes shopping with my mother, babysitting my sister, "laying out" with my friends (on the driveway.. ha!), calling the radio d.j.'s 50 times a day to request my favorite song and then turning it up so loud on my "boom box" so we could be cool while we tanned, swinging so high on swings I truly thought I might fly (... and if I didn't fly, I knew I was some sort of unrecognized world champion of swing sets), roller skating (again... champion!) and birthday parties. My birthday falls in June and my parents threw me some shin-digs! How do you capture this many "favorite" memories in a little bite? Not easily and I have not done my childhood summers justice but I did combine two things that so make me happy: purple and chocolate. I thought to myself, "What can capture THAT much happiness?" The answer: purple. It is my favorite color, the color of 4 childhood bedrooms I had, the color of my wedding, the best color ever. How fortunate I feel tonight, as I type this, to have had such a peaceful AND thrilling childhood that I can not nail down a favorite memory.
Happy end of summer friends...
These summer macarons are a simple shell, dyed purple with whipped chocolate ganache center.
* These macs didn't really rise tall but they did get lovely feet. They are flat with feet this time and I am not super pleased with them but we have to post the successes as well as the failures, right? Right? :)
Last week I had the pleasure of dining at a new restaurant here in Salt Lake city with a group of local food loving friends. The restaurant is Layla (which used to be Confetti) and is a Mediterranean delight. We were treated to a round of small plates (mezze) from the owner; Tony Tadros. He is quite the kitchen expert in his field and served us up a table of small plates that made our mouths water including: Layla's Traditional Hummus, Muhammara Walnut Spread, Falafel, Halloum Cheese and Layla's Signature Fries. My personal favorite was the Muhammara Walnut Spread. This small plate consists of fire roasted red peppers, toasted walnuts and pomegranate molasses and is completely sweet and spicy with the delicious crunch of walnut and served with Zaatar Flatbread and Pita Chips. The menu warns it is "highly addictive." It does not lie. For a complete menu description, please visit Layla's menu here. From there, we each ordered the entree of our choice and I chose the Mediterranean Chicken which was a pan roasted chicken breast served with garlic, capers and lemon. Very fresh, very authentic. We had the opportunity to sample the ice creams made exclusively for Layla by Tropical Dreams. They were a palate cleansing joy to nicely round out our full flavored meals. We were able to taste the rose water, orange blossom, lychee and pistachio ice creams. The rose water is just as you would expect and even got the comment of "tasting like a bath" (lavender gets a similar rating whenever I cook with it), the orange blossom was so light and wonderful and the lychee tasted exactly like a lychee. The hit was the pistachio! It was perfectly creamy and flavorful. You can visit Tropical Dreams storefront to try their other signature flavors.
Layla gets a star rating from me for good, authentic Mediterranean food in a clean and appealing, well decorated atmosphere with such excellent prices but what makes it even better is the passion behind the food with an owner who puts his heart into the dishes he prepares for you. Give them a visit and see for yourself what a treat this little hidden up and coming restaurant is.
