Bobby Flay's toasted coconut cake ... trial no. 1

It was my sister's farewell and early birthday dinner at home with family before she left for her posting overseas. I decided to make her a coconut cake since she loves coconut cake. She raves about the one from Lana's and from Delicious (at Scotts Square). After scouring the net, I decided to go with Bobby Flay's throwdown toasted coconut cake.

I made the components 2 days before our party and baked and assembled the cake the day before. It wasn't as labour intensive as some of the reviews said. My sister said she preferred the coconut not toasted so I decided to colour it pink. It's such a happy colour! I found there wasn't enough filling to make 3 layers and I was too lazy to make another batch of coconut custard, wait for it to cool and then whip it with heavy cream. So I decided to just make a 2 layer cake.

I still need practice with my cake writing! Here's the cake cut. Sorry it's not a very nice picture but you can probably see there's not a lot of filling even with one layer.

Here's what I thought of the cake -

1. The syrup was very sweet so I sloshed in quite a fair bit of Malibu rum to dilute it. That made it super yum! I'm adding it to the recipe.

2. I didn't really like the texture of the cake. It was a bit dense but that's probably because it was 2 fat layers instead of 4 thinner layers as it was meant to be. Also because it was quite cold when we ate it. But when I brought it to room temperature, the filling went mushy and wasn't as nice.

3. There was not enough of the filling and too much buttercream. I would make 3 times the filling amount (for 4 layers) and halve the buttercream. Also, the original recipe only uses 1/3 cup of icing sugar to 3 sticks of butter which didn't seem right. Most of the other blogs which reproduce the recipe increase the amount of icing sugar to 2 cups or more. I used 2 cups and it turned out a little too sweet for my liking. I think 1 1/3 cups should suffice. The coconut is sweetened so the buttercream doesn't have to be so sweet.

4. I've got a cold at the moment and can't taste a thing but everyone said it tasted good and was very fragrant. But it didn't get the same raves as Ina Garten's chocolate cake or even my sugee cake so I was a bit disappointed. How did Madam say it compared to her favourite coconut cakes? It was totally different and she still preferred those. I can't eat commercial cakes because I'm allergic to wheat but I think I'm going to have to try them some time to see what's so special about them.

What all this means is that I'm going to have to make this cake again. Maybe I'll substitute the cake with a light chiffon cake. Anyone for coconut cake?