i need a recipe. the recipe i need is for some type of rum/coconut/pineapple cake. the reason i need this recipe is as follows. when i was in high school, i used to work in the gift wrap department at what was then hudson's and is now marshall field's. i worked with a bunch of old ladies who would bring in food all the time on a varying scale of amazingness.
the person who brought in the best food was connie. she was the best baker i have ever encountered. and the best thing that connie ever baked was this super moist, rich, fluffy, boozy layer cake made with pineapple and rum and covered in a cloud of rummy coconut whipped cream. i kept sneaking pieces of it and i don't really know if anyone else got to eat any. it was the cake to end all cakes.
i harassed connie nonstop for the recipe but she refused to give it to me. there is some generational thing that i do not understand where old people guard their recipes like cash. i mean come on lady, i am a 16 year old kid who you will probably never see again after i go away to college, i am not going to steal your loved ones with this cake.
(i say that i do not understand this phenomenon but i do. i have a couple recipes that i don't think i will ever give to anyone because i have a sick fear that one day i will be so bitchy and obnoxious and smell so bad that nobody will like me any more and the only way i will be able to keep friends is to feed them these foods. i am so secretive about this that i won't even tell you which recipes they are).
anyway, connie was a really nice person other than the fact that she would not give up her damn cake recipe and she had nothing to fear. but i could not get that fucking recipe out of her no matter how hard i tried. eventually i gave up, and hoped to just forget the cake.
well i am now 31 years old, and connie is probably dead, and i am still thinking about that damn cake. i need it. i want it. i must have it. i have actually been scouring cookbooks and the internet on and off for years looking for a recipe and only recently have i been able to find a few that look like they might be similar. but i thought maybe you readers would have something up your sleeves?
here are the recipes that are giving me hope and keeping me from giving up the dream:
http://carolynnsrecipebox.blogspot.com/2011/08/coconut-layer-cake.html except i don't think it had almond flour in it (and i don't like almond desserts anyway) and it definitely didn't have white chocolate shavings
http://www.dallamiacucinadmc.com/2009/02/true-delights-pineapple-rum-cake-with.html (scroll down) except there was no zabaglione... the filling between the layers was just the whipped cream
http://lazychefrecipes.blogspot.com/2011/05/easy-pineapple-coconut-cake.html except that it was not this easy
http://www.food.com/recipe/tommy-bahama-pina-colada-cake-449664 except again, no white chocolate
http://baking.food.com/recipe/pina-colada-cake-164836 except it wasn't cool whip
http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljwzo9VULr1qc5cg7o1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1324496720&Signature=%2Bo2JOI2Zj6zYOtnWZZsQBs00DD8%3D except the coconut wasn't toasted and there was no white chocolate dammit! or maybe i am wrong about the white chocolate...?
please help!
9 comments:
Hey, what about something like this? You could always drizzle the cake with some rum before filling it. And I love putting shaved coconut on top. And the coconut milk in the cake gives a great flavour.
http://carolynnsrecipebox.blogspot.com/2010/05/pina-colada-cake.html
hmmm, also close but not exact. i will probably need to combine a few of these recipes a bunch of times and then get it perfectly right and forget to write down what i did. thank you and i love your blog!
Let's try to make one over Christmas! I'll look for recipes.
Google's semi-new recipe search engine might help you here:
http://www.google.com/landing/recipes/
With the ingredients you mentioned:
http://goo.gl/cx90K
ooh, awesome! thank you!
LOL at your comment warning! So now that I've found this and the sugar daddy blog, I'm becoming quite a fan of yours today.
I think a good starting point to "cracking the code" on this old recipe is to go old school--those plastic spiral bound cookbooks you find at 2nd hand bookstores, garage sales, and some churches are helpful. You'd be surprised at what some little old ladies will pull off as an old family recipe--yet use a box of Duncan Hines or Pillsbury to get that texture which is the realm of chemical perfection--unattainable by their more labor-intensive from-scratch counterparts. Sneaky old bitches, eh?
One thing to remember is that packaged foods were seen as "the wave of the future" and used just as much as today. When I'm trying out a new recipe, especially in baking, I like to do a small batch so I don't waste too many ingredients. It's helped as this practice has emboldened me; I'm more apt to try new things without letting my frugality get in the way. For example: I've found that a kitchen scale helps if I'm splitting up the contents of a cake box mix.
Alton Brown (Good Eats) has done many baking episodes in which he reveals the secrets of adapting recipes to bring out different qualities of an item.
Going with boxed mixes... this might be a good start: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,173,150163-233197,00.html
thanks marla! good tips, i appreciate it!
Girl, that's Pina Colada Cake! It was popular during the 1980's. Was it cool whip? If it was whipped cream it would melt down shortly after icing. Go to http://cookeatshare.com/recipes/pina-colada-cake-60849
and see it this is it! Another one was the Better than Sex cake, I kid you not, google it!
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