Recipe Corner: Mound Cake

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If you will recall, 

last year,

my oldest just wanted a 

"simple"

 Skittles Cake,

Simple cakes are

NOT 

in my vocabulary!

So I made this

Skittles Flavored Rainbow Cake

(which by the way is, BY FAR,

my most popular post with 

10,824 views at last look!!!! 

WHOO HOO!!!)

So this year,

he the instructions I was given were

"coconut and chocolate".

So I started Googling!

And

Pinteresting!

And came across something called a

Mounds Layer Cake

over at

Confessions of a Cookbook Queen

I was so excited!!!

I followed the directions pretty spot on.

I only took a few pictures,

but lemme tellya,

this stuff,

right here,

 in the picture below,

is AH-MAZING!

Cream of Coconut!

And you see this 1/3 c measuring cup right here?

Those are ABSOLUTELY 

lick marks in the bottom of that thing!

No Shame here!

I totally LICKED the thing CLEAN!

(after dumping it in the mixer, of course!)

 Just in case you needed another look!

And it make a KILLER

addition to ANY

cup of coffee!

I did resist eating the rest of the can

with that spoon sticking out of it.

Barely though!

 In this process,

I also discovered the amazingness of fluffier buttercream!

I had been a Wilton girl for a while,

mainly because I was too scared to play with my icing.

This buttercream turned out so amazingly smooth and fluffy!

I haven't gone back to "regular" buttercream since!

The cream of coconut and heavy whipping cream are added to the butter

and whipped.

LIFE CHANGING MOMENT!!!

(this is just the start of the frosting!)

 The center of the cake was simple,

flaked coconut combined with sweetened condensed milk.

I did not cut any of these cakes down,

usually I will level them,

I chose not to since there was such a thick layer of coconut

in the middle,

I figured it would all even out.

Frosted it with my new favorite frosting!

Made my ganache!

I attempted to speed up the process a bit,

and threw it in the fridge to solidify a bit.

I kept checking it and it went from not quite ready

to too thick!

REALLY QUICK!

So it didn't "flow" over the top as I had wished.

I had to help it...

But it still turned out GREAT!!!

And my mom & sisters told me it looked like what we get at 

our long time favorite bakery...

what a compliment!!!

And it tasted YUMMY too!!

So its official,

my oldest has outgrown shaped and designed cakes

and has graduated to

specific flavors!

I wonder what he will challenge me with next year!