Coconut lime cake

There are some flavours that seem to just be perfect companions for each other, such as tomatoes and basil and lamb and mint, and in my opinion coconut and lime.  So when I saw this recipe for pina colada cake at bountifulkitchen.com I decided to swap out the pineapple filling for a lime curd.

Apart from the filling and the frosting I stuck exactly to the recipe after all it was a winner at the Ohio State Fair. Though I did not have any coconut extract, so had to leave it out, but actually it had a strong coconut flavour any way.


Cake:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
1 1/4 cups coconut milk
1 1/2 teaspoons coconut extract
5 egg whites (keep the yolks for the filling)

Mix flour, baking powder in a bowl and set aside. Place the butter in a mixing bowl and beat on medium speed with a mixer for 1 minute. Add sugar and beat for another minute. Add coconut milk and coconut extract to butter mixture. Gradually add flour mixture into the butter mixture and beat for 2 minutes.

In another bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Fold the egg whites into the batter and mix until all ingredients are incorporated.

Grease and line two 8-inch cake pans with parchment paper and divide batter evenly between them.

Royal wedding cup cakes

I decided to stay up and watch the Royal wedding on Thursday night (3:00 am Friday Morning on the West Coast) it could hardly have been a worse time. The question was whether to stay up all night or go to bed and get up early.  Well the answer was go to bed at 10:00 and wake up at 1:00 am, my internal clock decided I wanted to see everything including a whole lot of filler and inane chatter from commentator's with nothing much to say.

Having said that I am glad I watched it live, and it really was a beautiful ceremony, the music was wonderful and bride was beautiful she reminded my of Grace Kelly, a wonderful role model for Royal brides.  I felt we had to celebrate at work so decided to make some cupcakes and decorate appropriately for the royal wedding.

A cupcake sitting on my Mothers English Minton China

I have based this on a recipe by Ina Garten I changed it slightly based on what I had on hand and the recipe for the icing seemed to be far too much. I was correct even with the smaller amount I made there was quite a bit left. This made 24 cupcakes

Steamed coconut pudding

Pudding has several meanings in England. Over here in north America it means a type of custard, but in England pudding is used in the same way as we use desert. It also means a dish that is steamed in a bowl this could be savoury like steak and kidney pudding or sweet like treacle pudding.

Steamed coconut pudding is one of my fathers favourite old time recipes, I don't remember my mother making this that often but when she did I always enjoyed.

Like parkin this is one of the recipes I found in the little hand written note book of my mothers recipes, and I had never made it before, in fact I don't think I have ever steamed a pudding of any sort before.  My mothers instructions as ever were cryptic at best, but I vaguely remember watching her make it when  I was young.  (I hung out in the kitchen a lot when I was little)