Coconut Wedding Cake

Ready for a surprise? I'm the one who got married! The food at my wedding was also special because my family and friends made it. ALL of it. I am the luckiest girl I know.

One of the wonderful women who helped pull this all together was Peggy Nelson. You can find her blog here. I was planning on making both the wedding cake and groom's cake, but as I should have guessed, time ran out! Peggy and my sister came to the rescue by frosting and decorating the groom's cake... didn't it turn out wonderfully? She also made the beautiful mexican wedding cookies in the pictures above. She and her family have been good friends of ours for years, and I was incredibly grateful for the help.

The wedding cake was five layers, each with a different flavor: carrot, spice, vanilla with raspberry, coconut, and plain vanilla. All of it was covered with cream cheese frosting and coconut. It was certainly a labor of love, but it was fun to try something new (and saved us a lot of money!).

The pictures above are all from Tami Shellenburg. Remember Tami? I did her wedding cake last year when she was married. Her photography business is thriving and you can find her website here. It's so great to have talented friends!

And.... here is a picture of my new husband! We obviously both liked the cake. Isn't he cute?

The Cupcakes I Will Never Make

I love cupcakes. All kinds. So it figures that I would marry someone who doesn't particularly like any cupcakes, and who HATES cupcakes with any type of fruit or vegetable in them.

I'm sure I will find some excuse to make these fruity treats during our lifetime together (there will be plenty of relief society/primary parties that call for festive cupcakes, right?), but for now I am posting the cupcakes are being put on hold. Hopefully you can make them and tell me how wonderful they are. :)

These are strawberry cupcakes with strawberry cream cheese frosting... and the best part? They are semi-homemade! Yep... made with a box cake mix and some strawberry jello. The recipe (and more pictures) are from Stupendous Treats. I recently re-discovered Haagen Dazs's strawberry ice cream, so I REALLY want to try these!

Peaches and Cream cupcakes from Cupcake Project. I'm afraid of these turning out like muffins with frosting on top, but maybe if they were made with angel food cake and whipped cream frosting... mmm!

Aren't these cute? I loved these in the summer when I was little. It's amazing enough that they look like the popsicle, but they taste like it too! (Or so I imagine from the recipe.)

Pistachio cupcakes. These might only sound good to me (which I conclude after countless attempts to buy pistachio pudding in the grocery store while my siblings or friends would tell me it was "so disgusting"). The interesting thing about this recipe is that it uses Dream Whip in the frosting! I've never worked with Dream Whip, but I'm told I am missing out on something great. It's definitely worth a shot.

I can't imagine what Orange Cupcakes would taste like. At all. Citrus into a bread product seems hard to do, but I'm sure I would love them! They look especially cute for a Halloween theme. (Side note: how did the author of My Baking Addiction get the frosting to look like that? Are there XXL frosting tips out there that I'm not aware of?)

Pineapple and Coconut Cupcakes sound genius. My mom used to make a wonderful pineapple upside-down cake when I was little and I imagine these taste similar.

These Zucchini Spice Cupcakes can be found in the Martha Stewart Cupcake book. Zucchini bread is awesome, so I don't see how these could go wrong.

Okay these are getting closer to something Dan would like, but they still have fruit in them. Bananas and chocolate are perfect together. One of my favorite treats in high school was Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory chocolate-dipped bananas. Eating them in cupcake form would just be that much better! The recipe can be found on the Love and Olive Oil blog.

Well, happy baking everyone. Let me know if you try any of these! In the meantime, I'll try to convert my fruit-in-baked-goods hating husband and join in on the fun.

German Chocolate Cake

It was my wonderful fiancé's birthday last week, and he requested a german chocolate cake. I've never made one of these before! I did some research though, and did you know that german chocolate cake didn't come from Germany at all? It came from a guy in the United States named Sam German who worked for Baker's Chocolate Company. He invented a mildly sweet dark chocolate, and they named it after him. Hence, German Chocolate! Now for today's recipe...

Coconut Pecan Frosting

1 cup evaporated milk

1 cup granulated sugar

3 beaten egg yolks

1/2 cup butter

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/3 cups shredded coconut

1 cup roasted pecans

Add everything except for the coconut and pecans in a 2 quart saucepan. It is very important that you add the egg yolks when everything is cold, because they will scramble if you add them later on. Cook this mixture over medium heat for about 12 minutes, then add the coconut and roasted pecans. (Note: to roast pecans, I just spread them out on a baking sheet and broil them for a couple of minutes. It's really easy.) The frosting will be too thin to spread at this point, but it will thicken as it cools. I recommend using this as a filling and topping, but if you want to use it to cover the entire cake then I would double the recipe for sure. Happy eating!

Italian Cream Cake

This is my dad's favorite cake. He used to get bags of pecans from his grandpa's house every summer and his mom would have to come up with lots of recipes to use them in. She made pecan pie every Christmas for all of her neighbors, but I personally like what she's done with the pecans in this recipe even more than her wonderful pies. I've made my grandmother's version many times before and loved the texture and taste of it, but it takes a lot of time so be prepared. Unless it is my dad's birthday, I usually just stick with the semi-homemade version. I've put up both recipes for you to choose from.

Italian Cream Cake (Grandmother's version)

1 cup buttermilk

1 tsp baking soda

5 eggs (divided)

2 cups sugar

1 stick butter

1/2 cup Crisco

2 cups sifted flour

1 Tbs vanilla

1 cup chopped pecans

1 small bag of coconut

Combine soda and buttermilk and let stand a few minutes. Beat egg whites until stiff, set aside. Cream sugar, butter and shortening; add egg yolks one at a time and beat well after each addition. Add buttermilk mixture alternately with flour to sugar mixture. Stir in vanilla, fold in egg whites. Gently stir in pecans and coconut. Bake in three 9-inch greased and floured cake rounds for 25 minutes.

Italian Cream Cake (Semi-homemade version)

1 vanilla cake mix

1 tbs vanilla extract

1 bag shredded coconut

1/2 cup pecans, plus more for decorating

Prepare the vanilla cake mix as the box directs. Chop pecans and add to cake mix with vanilla. Add in 1/2 of the bag of coconut (I usually chop my coconut beforehand a little so that the cake holds together better). Pour into 2 prepared cake rounds and bake in a 350 degree oven for 25-30 minutes or until the center bounces back when lightly touched.

The reserved 1/2 bag of coconut is for the outside of the cake. To toast, set the oven on broil and lay the coconut out on a cookie sheet. Hold under the broiler for 30 seconds at a time, mixing between. Once the frosting is on and the coconut has cooled, just press onto the sides of the cake using your hand. This is a messy process but makes the cake so much prettier.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8-oz package regular cream cheese

2 sticks butter

1 tsp vanilla

4-5 cups powdered sugar

Cream butter and cream cheese together. Add vanilla, then add powdered sugar in stages. This makes plenty to cover and decorate one cake.