Toasted Coconut 3 layer cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

I am all about honoring summer right now. The fresh flavors of summer produce and herbs light my fire. School starts this week for my youngest and I am a little sad. Busy schedules ;and before you know it, it will be Christmas. So for one last taste of the tropical balmy summer, I made this Toasted Coconut cake.

This is a scratch made cake but don't let the ingredient list scare you. It is a labor of love and mixes well and in a jiffy!

• 3 sticks butter, softened

• 2 cups sugar

• 3 cups cake flour

• 5 eggs

• 1 teaspoon vanilla

• 1 teaspoon almond extract

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• ½ teaspoon baking soda

• ½ teaspoon salt

• 1 cup 2% milk

• 4 oz sweetened coconut

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar until well mixed and fluffy. Slowly mix in eggs(room temperature) one at a time, making sure to mix each one well. Add vanilla and almond extracts and mix well. Slowly add in flour and milk a little at a time. Otherwise you could have a foggy, powdery mess! I add the flour and milk in 2 parts and mix well each time. Grease 3, 9inch pans. I use Bakers Joy cooking spray. It eliminates the need to grease and flour the pans because it has both in it already. Evenly spread batter in all 3 pans and gently tap each one on the counter to remove air pockets. Bake for 40 minutes. At the halfway mark, I rotate my pans from top to bottom rack for even cooking. Be careful here though, you don't want those cakes to fall!

While the cakes are cooling, make this simply delicious frosting.

• 1 stick butter, softened

• 8 oz cream cheese, softened

• 1 teaspoon vanilla

• 16 oz. powdered sugar

Cream the butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy. Mix in vanilla well. Slowly incorporate powdered sugar in small batches mixing well each time. Now you have a beautiful versatile cream cheese icing.

Now for the toasted Coconut. This is the trickiest thing about this cake. It's really not tricky it's more of you have to tend to it the whole time. Coconut takes a minute to toast but when it does, it happens quickly and can easily burn. I recommend doing this when having nothing else going on in the kitchen. I did about a cup and a half for the outside of the cake. It was more than enough, I even had some left over for my yogurt this week! Place the coconut in an even layer in a skillet on low heat. Move around just until you start to smell the coconut. Slowly increase your heat until the small bits start to turn yellow. Then start moving it around pretty regularly. In a matter of minutes the moisture will leave the coconut and it will start to brown. This is the part that happens fast, so it is important that when it reaches your desired toastiness, that you remove the pan from the heat when you turn it off.

Allow the Coconut to cool while you are frosting your cake. Here I sprinkled some on top and patted it on the sides. The toasted coconut gives a nutty flavor to this sweet cake that balances perfectly.

Enjoy!