Coconut and chocolate layer cake -- for blog anniversary (and cake picnic)

When we were planning to go to the cake picnic, I panicked about my cake needing to be a layer cake to fulfill the requirement that it was at least 7cm high.  I am not one for lots of frosting and my experiences with layer cakes have had not always been the most stable creations.  Today marks my 19th blog anniversary and each year I celebrate by sharing a fancy cake.  So today I bring you the story of baking a coconut and chocolate layer cake for the Melbourne Cake Picnic.

The Cake Picnic was a huge and daunting experience.  I don't have many layer cakes in my repertoire and don't feel comfortable making them..  I also wanted some decoration, but this is as challenging for me as creating layer cakes.  To add more complications, my daughter Sylvia, who had also booked to take a cake to the Cake Picnic, was in hospital on a drip for acute tonsillitis two days before the picnic.  I had also agreed to take a vegan cake in solidarity with Sylvia has become vegan at the start of the year.

The practice cake

When I looked at previous of my cake recipes that I have loved, not many are layer cakes.  After considering a number of previous looked at quite a few possible cakes but ended up with one that I loved.  Like most of my cakes, it did not meet the minimum 7cm high required for entry to the Cake Picnic.  It had been previously shared with friends who were impressed.  This time it had to be a layer cake!  Gulp!

One of the best parts of my chosen Coconut and chocolate chunk cake was that it was not over sweet, it had bits in it and had a simple but wonderful roasted coconut and melty chocolate topping with a light drizzle of icing.  Plus it was vegan!  These were not the ingredients for a fancy Cake Picnic layer cake.  

I made a practice cake the weekend before the cake picnic.  It looked impressive without the icing but a complete mess once the icing was added.  

The beautiful and unusual topping is one of my favourite parts of the recipe but sadly did not make it into the final layer cake.  I have thought about whether it was a mistake to lose it and am still not sure.  When I made my practice cake, the roasted coconut seemed difficult to slice through cleanly.  It was not the only problem.  The drizzle split and looked like curdled milk.  The buttercream frosting was soft and oozy.    In retrospect I also blame my impatience.  We cooled the cakes just long enough to layer and ice them and then sampled the result.

 A layer cake is not made to be eaten fresh, which is how we sampled it.  A layer cake should have time to compose itself, to cool before being iced and then to allow the icing (or frosting) to firm up before it is presented and sliced as a showstopper!  I am not a showstopper sort of person!  Perhaps this is why I love cakes less than 7cm high that can be sliced up warm from the oven without the collapsing mess of a fresh layer cake.

Another reason I don't make layer cakes often is that they are made to be shared at an event.   I was fine to take a large cake to a cake picnic but found it challenging to make a large cake at home for practice.  It felt wasteful and greedy.  And because it collapsed, it did not look great for slicing or storing.  I ended up having some at home for us and Sylvia shared some with E.  Most of it I packed into a large box and took into work including a lot of crumbs.  My colleagues were very grateful and ate most of it over a week.  I came back at the end of that week to find a couple fo  crumbly slices left in the cake box that some kind soul had put in the fridge.  It still tasted wonderful.  Yes, I finished it off!

Considering how to refine the recipe 

I was so unhappy about the presentation of my cake that I considered making something else.  However firstly it tasted amazing, and secondly I didn't have time or the stomach for another practice.  Instead of finding another recipe, I spent a lot of time thinking how to improve this one.  How to make it slice neatly.  How to make stable frosting!  How to make the frosting less tooth-achingly sweet!  How to decorate it!

One of the issues I found really difficult was how soft the frosting was.  Vegan butter (I used Nuttalex) is softer than dairy.  I needed some ballast so the frosting would hold up the top layer.  I read online and found useful advice at Life, Love and Sugar.  She has some great tutorials on frosting cakes and recommended using vegetable shortening.  Can't stop 

Cakers Paradise had a good post on How to use Vegetable Shortening with an Australia perspective.  They describe the buttercream with shortening as more stable and less likely to slide off the cake.  That really appealed to me as a baker who has had the top slide off layer cakes in the past!  It was in this article that I found that Solite is the Australian version of Crisco in America.  Can't stop Baking also has useful advice on shortening in Australia and describes it as giving the icing a velvety soft 

I searched online to find where to buy Solite locally.  It is available at cake stores (not supermarkets) but often in bulk.  I found a 500g tub for $7.95 at My Dream Cake Decorating Supplier SuperStore in Sunshine.  I only used 95g but it is shelf stable and I am told it can be used in pastry and cake recipes.  I was also pleased to get cake boards and cake boxes fairly cheaply there.  It is the first time I have ever used a cake box and it is so long since I bought cake boards that I can't remember where it was.  They were really useful for the cake picnic so this shopping trip reduced my stress levels.

One of the attractions of the coconut and chocolate topping was that it meant very little need for fancy decoration.  However when it did not quite work I had to think more about decoration.  This is not my forte.  The cake has some orange zest in it so I decided to use some dried orange slices.  (Ironically I never used enough orange to add much to the flavour.)

I was gobsmacked that Woolworths supermarket sold a large 125g jar of dried orange slices for $24.  I looked elsewhere.  Our local Al Alamy Middle Eastern grocer had a 150g tub of dried orange slices for about $5-8.  I can't remember the exact price but I do remember laughing with the guy who sold it to me about how ridiculously expensive they were in Woollies.  Like the Solite I have not used the rest of them since despite good intentions! 

Baking the second and final cake

I had planned to make cakes on Friday, the day before the cake picnic.  Sylvia would make her own.  Our plans were thrown out after we unexpectedly spent hours on the Thursday afternoon prior as she was hooked up to a drip in the Emergency Department for acute tonsillitis.  The doctor cleared her to go out on Saturday but her energy levels were still low.  So I baked the four cakes for our two layer cakes on Friday but Sylvia helped with decoration.  That's her thing!

I adjusted the recipe slightly to use desiccated coconut instead of the larger shreds and I cut the chocolate chunks a tad smaller.  I am not sure it made  a huge difference to slicing but I missed the larger bits.  Maybe I would not do that next time.  You can see in the picture above just how much chocolate is added to the cake.  I think this is one of the reasons I love it so much.  It is so satisfying to bite into a chunk of dark chocolate that counters the sweetness of the cake batter.

I really love cakes fresh out of the oven.  This is not why I kept a small amount of the mixture aside to bake a mini cake.  It was my worries about the texture and flavour not being quite right.  I hate taking a cake to a gathering that I have not had a chance to test taste.  It makes me nervous.  Having a taste of this cake prior to the picnic reassured me.

Frosting the cake

The icing that I made was excellent.  I decided to add some cocoa and salt after the practice icing was far too sweet, especially for a cake that was not overly sweet.  This worked well to give it flavour rather than just sweetness.  I also was pleased that the frosting recipe at Life, Love and Sugar directed to just add the icing sugar in two lots.  Other recipes have said to add the icing gradually in a constant cloud of sweet dust because I have been told that too much will crush out the air that was beaten into the butter.

Just look at how that icing holds its shape!  I piped the icing onto the bottom cake in (wonky) circles so that I could spread it out evenly.  (I also trimmed the top of this cake to make sure that the top cake sat neatly on the bottom.)  We have a cake decorating turntable (that gets very little use) that helped with even piping around the cake.  One of us would pipe and the other would gradually rotate the cake.

My decorations and Sylvia's matcha layer cake

When it comes to cake decorating ideas, I go blank.  Just like I have the best ideas about what to say when it is too late, I also get much better ideas after I finish decorating a cake.  I wish we hadn't been so unexpectedly busy in the run up to the cake picnic so I had time to practice the decoration.  If I had my time over, I would do this differently.  I would focus more on chocolate and coconut but this wasn't too bad for a time-stretched amateur such as me.  

The halves of dried orange slices sat in blob of frosting.  I finely chopped dark chocolate for the centre.  In mind I had planned gorgeous chocolate curls but did not have the energy or time.  Sylvia used a fine pair of tweezers to arrange the gold stars on the spaces and I sprayed some gold dust over it. 

 

Sylvia is very creative when it comes to decoration.  After I baked her Matcha layer cake we were disappointed that the matcha was too old to make it a lovely green like the first version of this cake about a year ago.  You can see the cake turntable in the top left of the above photo collage.  (I had suggested she make a practice cake but she told me she did not need to!)  Top right is her jam dam!  I don't know how she knew to make the dam for the apricot jam as we have never done it before but she did it with style.  After the first layer she added some matcha to the frosting which made it a lovely pale green.

On top of the cake, she had a lake of apricot jam surrounded by swirly icing (bottom left photo above).  She then added halved dried orange slices, gold sprinkles, gold spray and arranged gold stars one by one.  I was in admiration of her patience.  If we had thought of it earlier, all the frosting would have been green but she added gold stars to the edge of the middle layer of frosting to mirror the gold on top.  Above in the bottom right photo you can see the final version that was finished at 11.30pm on the Friday!

The Cake Picnic 

We stored our cakes in cake boxes in the fridge overnight and took them along to the cake picnic the next day.  Here is my cake in the marque with other cakes in the background.  I felt good about my offering even if it wasn't as jaw dropping as some of the cakes.  At the end about three quarters of my cake was eaten and I took the rest home to store in the freezer (it was too messy to share).  Occasionally I have a chunk.  A lot of it is still frozen waiting for a moment that demands cake!

You can read more on my blog about my experience at the Melbourne Cake Picnic 2026.

Here is a slice of my cake on my messy platter of cake picnic slices.  In the rush to select the best of the 1600 cakes at the cake picnic we were guided by our eyes rather than flavour.  While my cake was not the prettiest, it was one of my favourite cakes there.  It is great to try other people's cakes but I know what I like and baked for my preferences!  

Reflections on 19 years of blogging and how it helped make this cake 

As it is the 19th anniversary of my blog, I will close with reflections about how much I have learnt from the blog.  It is one thing to bake a lot.  It is another to constantly be photographing, recording and reflecting on recipes, and to have all this to look back over when I want to bake a cake or cook a meal.  Without my index of all that I have made, choosing this cake would have been far harder.  It was stressful making it but so much less than it would be without my blog as an important aid in baking, and learning about developing recipes.  Crucial to this is the support and inspiration of the online community.  

I have learnt so much and made such amazing creations over the 19 years since I thought I might like to start a blog.  At the start I didn't know what I was doing.  It was sometimes a bit of a car crash.  (It sometimes still is!)  Who could have known how much it would have nourished my love of food, photography and writing; fed my curiosity; and more than satisfied my desire for an amzing meal.  Today as I look back over those years, it has made my life a lot richer and exciting.  I thank you,  dear readers, for joining me along the journey!

More layer cakes on Green Gourmet Giraffe:

• Butterscotch layer cake 
• Carrot cake (with cream cheese frosting and fondant carrots)   
• Floating Malteser cake with fudgy buttercream frosting 
• Ginger Fluff Sponge (gf) 
• Matcha layer cake with strawberry and cream 
• Vegan chocolate (layer) cake (v)   
• Vegan Victoria sponge cake (v)
• Zucchini layer cake with cream cheese frosting (gf, v) 

Coconut and chocolate layer cake
Adapted from Green Gourmet Giraffe 

Dry ingredients:
2 cups white flour
1/2 cup wholemeal flour
2 cups shredded or desiccated coconut
1 1/2 cups raw sugar 
1 tbsp baking powder
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp salt

Wet ingredients:
240g vegan butter, melted
2 cup coconut milk
1 cup applesauce
1 tbsp grated orange zest
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoon vanilla extract 

300g dark chocolate, chopped into small chunks

Vegan Chocolate Buttercream Icing (see below recipe) 
Additional decorations such as chocolate flakes, coconut flakes, oranges and stars as desired. 

Baking the cake 

Preheat oven to 180 C and grease and line 2 x 20cm round cake tins.

Mix dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.  Mix wet ingredients in a small mixing bowl or large jug.  Pour the wet into the dry and mix until just combined.  Mix in the 300g dark chocolate chunks.

Scrape mixture into prepared cake tins.  To get even cakes, weigh the mixture (mine was about 11000g for each cake.)

Bake for about 40-45 minutes (or 60 minutes if your oven is a bit slow like mine).  Test the cakes with a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean (try to avoid the melted chocolate if possible but even if you don't you should see if the mixture clings to the skewer).  if cakes are getting too dark before it is cooked, cover with some foil.   Cool baked cakes in the tin for at least 15 minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack to cool.

Frosting and assembling the cake 

I left my cakes to cool for 4-5 hours but overnight is fine.  Before frosting, check if cakes are level for layering by sitting them atop each other without frosting.  Now trim top of one cake to make sure it is flat enough tso the second cake sits neatly on top..  I did not trim the top cake.  

Place the bottom cake onto a cake board (or plate).  Pipe the icing in an even swirl onto the cake using a thick nozzle.  Use a spatula to spread the icing neatly and place the second cake on top gently.  Spread icing on top of the second cake.  At this stage you can finish or you can decorate the cake.  

I piped blobs of frosting around the edge and press half rounds of dried oranges into these and put thinly sliced flakes of chocolate in the middle and use a pair of tweezers to place gold stars onto the icing.  If I did it again I would like wedges or lines of alternating chocolate and coconut with lines of frosting between to make it look neater.  There are so many options.

NOTES:

If you look at the recipe I used as a base, you can see it has chocolate and coconut baked on top, which I really liked but did not do this here due to concerns about neat slicing.

Icing sugar and icing are Australian terms - Americans will be more familiar with powdered sugar and frosting! 

I have not specified an amount of buttercream because it depends how much decoration you want to do.  I prefer minimal icing and used much less than half the recipe below but it keeps in the fridge for ages. 

I used Whittakers Dark Ghana chocolate which is vegan.  I worked out that 50g of their chocolate is about 9 squares of chocolate.  When I chopped the chocolate into chunks my notes say that I chopped each square into about 3-4 pieces.

Vegan Chocolate Buttercream Icing (Frosting)
Adapted from Life, Love and Sugar

115g vegan butter
95 g shortening
460g icing sugar
15g cocoa
2 tbsp coconut cream (or milk)
1 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt

Beat butter and shortening together until soft and creamy.  Beat in half icing sugar until well mixed and repeat with second half of icing sugar and cocoa.  Beat in coconut cream, vanilla and salt.  (If needed you can adjust thickness as desired by either adding more liquid to make it softer or more icing sugar to make it thicker.)  Use straightaway or store in the fridge if not using that day and bring it back to room temperature just before you are ready to use it.  Leftovers can be stored in the fridge or freezer.

On the stereo:
Forever is a feeling: the Archives - Lucy Dacus