Coconut Pound Cake

Coconut Pound Cake - made April 15, 2011 from The Lady & Sons Just Desserts by Paula Deen (book #87)

I'm still trolling for recipes that use up milk and/or buttermilk and that inevitably leads me to cakes.  I love coconut, especially in my favorite recipe for coconut cake.  So I figured I would love coconut pound cake as well and wanted to try this recipe.  I think I've only tried one recipe from this cookbook.  Not that it doesn't have a lot of good-looking recipes in it because it does.  But sometimes Paula Deen's recipes scare me on a caloric level.  I love her accent and listening to her on her show but I shudder when I see the amount of butter that goes into some of her cooking and baking.  I love butter but it doesn't love me back....

There probably aren't enough workouts I can do in a day that would offset a piece of one of Paula's creations.  Which is why it's important to make those empty calories count with your taste buds. I walked 11 miles the same day I made this cake so I had a fighting chance that I burned enough calories to try a taste test piece, lol.  The  rest is going into the freezer in slices to be later distributed to friends and family.

Fortunately this recipe didn't have more than the usual amount of butter a cake might have.  Although the addition of shortening isn't typical.  The only alteration I made to this recipe is I substituted vanilla extract for the coconut extract.  Much as I love coconut, I don't like coconut extract.  It tastes too artificial.  I also added an extra handful of coconut to the batter to make up for not using the coconut extract and because I love coconut.  This made a little too much batter for my Bundt cake pan so I also baked some in a small Bundt pan.

I really liked this cake.  It's slightly more dense than a layer cake so it's the perfect texture for a pound cake without being too dense as it also had some "fluff" to it.  I loved the flavor and chewiness of the coconut in it.  The only thing I didn't like is it didn't come out cleanly and intact from my Bundt pan but that's more a problem with the pan than the cake itself.  It's time for me to get a new (and really) nonstick Bundt pan.  Bottom line: this was well worth the 11-mile walk to consume the taste test piece.  Heck, I'd walk another 11 miles for a second piece.

¾ cup shortening

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

3 cups sugar

5 eggs

3 cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 cup milk

2 teaspoons coconut extract

1 3.5-ounce can flaked, sweetened coconut

1.     Preheat oven to 325˚F.  Grease and flour a 10-inch Bundt pan.

2.     Using an electric mixer, cream shortening, butter, and sugar together.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Sift together flour, salt and baking powder, and add alternately with milk to shortening mixture, beginning and ending with flour.  Add coconut extract and stir in coconut.  Pour into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour and 25 minutes or until done.  Cool for 10 minutes; invert onto cake plan.

Serves 16 to 20