The week of the cake - take one!

Last week saw me a little bit snowed under with a birthday cake order and desperately trying to think of something to do for our fourth wedding anniversary.

Over the past few years we have always stuck to the "traditional" anniversary gifts - first year was paper, second year was cotton, and so on... well, four years is celebrated with flowers. Easy! If you're a guy buying for a gal...

I wracked mine and my Twitter pals' brains, but aside from something for the garden (which would have been disastrous considering I don't "do" gardens) all I could think of was flowers... flour... so I went with it!

The boy is often subjected to hours of "wow, look at this one!" and "mmmmm, can't wait to make these" as I flick through my pink bible, but the one we have both expressed big Mmms at is the Coconut Layer Cake. I promised him I would do this for his birthday in November, but that seems an age away, so I got cracking on it for our anniversary using my flowers = flour logic.

Sourcing the ingredients for this one was as much a challenge as the baking and creating! I "finally" tracked down a couple of tins of coconut milk in the 'Indian' section of my local (orange-coloured) supermarket.

The only thing I couldn't find anywhere, much to my disappointment, was a fresh coconut to grate and roast for decoration. But this wasn't a strictly necessary part of the cake, and I improvised at the end with dessicated coconut - yum!

This cake was involved, but fairly straightforward to make. The Hummingbird, as ever, described and instructed each step of the method brilliantly. I even managed to make my coconut custard for the filling and decoration lump-free!

One thing I will say is to make sure you have set aside plenty of time... this isn't one you can do in a rush... unless you're Nigella, goddess of the kitchen, but even then I think she'd be too distracted with licking her fingers provocatively and pouting at the camera!

The finished cake went down very well indeed and the boy was more than impressed with his anniversary present! He even shared a few pieces with our nieces and nephews and I got the thumbs up from all of them, too!

Only problem with this cake is... it's too moreish! Well worth the extra time and effort... and another word of advice - don't throw out the egg whites left over from the seven egg yolks you need... they go seven-tenths of the way there for the ten egg whites you need for the Angel Food Cake! Cue 'The week of the cake - part two'!