Coconut Pound Cake

Coconut Pound Cake - made January 12, 2013 from Dramatic Pancake

Still on a mission to use up some milk plus I love coconut so this was a perfect recipe to try out, especially since the picture was so tempting on Dramatic Pancake's blog (love that name).  This cake was really, really good.  I'm partial to coconut so it already had the halo effect to start with and it didn't disappoint.  It's a good butter cake with the added chewiness of the coconut.  While the cake is good as a standalone, don't skip the glaze and the coconut sprinkled on top as that adds to the overall taste and texture of the cake.

The only tricky thing is to make sure you don't underbake it - says the Queen of Underbaking.  The high butter content ensures its moistness and it's hard to overbake this cake.  The original directions say to bake it for an hour but I ended up baking mine for 1 hour 20 minutes.  Unheard of, right?  But at an hour, while the toothpick looked deceptively clean, I noticed it did have a wet sheen to it.  It didn't have raw batter on it but I know when I've taken cakes out before at that stage, they've been underbaked.  So I left it in until the cake was firm to the touch and the toothpick met a little more resistance when I poked it into the cake.  And even then, I didn't achieve the fluffy-looking texture Dramatic Pancake did - mine was still a pound-cake butter-moist texture.  So perhaps I could've baked it longer but it was good enough for me.

2 cups all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup unsalted butter (at room temperature)
2 cups sugar
5 eggs (at room temperature)
1 cup whole (or low-fat) milk
1 teaspoon coconut extract (I used vanilla extract)
3½ oz Angel Flake sweetened, shredded coconut

Glaze
2 tbsp unsweetened coconut milk (or regular milk)
1/2 teaspoon coconut extract (I used vanilla extract)
1/2 – 1 cup confectioners’ sugar

1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease and lightly flour a 9- or 10-inch tube pan. This cake is delicate so I wouldn’t recommend using a bundt pan.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.
3. In a separate bowl, use an electric mixer (on medium speed) to cream the butter and sugar until fluffy (about 3 minutes). Add in eggs, one at a time, and mix well. Stir in the milk, coconut (or vanilla) extract and shredded coconut. Finally, add the flour, baking powder and salt mixture, and stir to combine. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake until golden brown, about 1 hour.
4. Meanwhile, prepare the glaze. Whisk together the coconut milk (or milk), coconut (or vanilla) extract and confectioner’s sugar until smooth, adding more sugar as needed to thicken the glaze (or more milk if you want to thin it out).
5. Cool cake in pan for 5-10 minutes before removing. Drizzle with glaze while cake is still warm.