Coconut Cream Cake | The Reptile Room

Both the kitchen and the cake were still warm from baking. The cake was a magnificent thing, rich and creamy with the perfect amount of coconut.
The Reptile Room
Lemony Snicket

I’m not a huge cake eater, I much prefer the savoury side of eating and tend to find cake just not quite satisfying. However, I kind of love making cakes. Which is quite fortunate for my housemates and neighbours. This particular cake is so delicious during hot weather, the frosting is creamy, with the notes of coconut throughout creating an almost refreshing mouthful. While the cake itself isn’t too sweet.

Obviously I’m on a little bit of a Series of Unfortunate Events kick at the moment. My parents recently dropped off a lot of my childhood books that were still at their house. Including a heap from the above mentioned series. I think the finishing up of the recent Netflix series has inspired me to do a bit of a reread - I have no memory of reading some of the parts, so it’s definitely a fascinating thing to revisit. I genuinely have no idea how the book series finishes at this stage, and am super curious to whether it’s the same as the television show.

Of course I had to make Uncle Monty’s (was the death of any guardian quite as awful as this one?) coconut cream cake from The Reptile Room.

Coconut Cream Cake
Ingredients
Cake
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 tsp bi-carb soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups desiccated coconut
1 1/2 cups coconut milk
1/2 vegetable oil
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
Frosting
100g vegetable shortening, softened
1/2 cup coconut cream, can kept in fridge over night, scoop the solid cream from the top
1 cup cream cheese (I used Sheese brand, but any works well)
4 cups icing sugar

Cake

1. Preheat your oven to 180C and prepare two round 18cm cake tins. I highly recommended both greasing the pans and also placing a square of baking paper at the bottom to assist in getting the cakes out.

2. Sift together the four, baking power, bi-carb soda and salt, add in the desiccated coconut, sugar and mix to combine.

3. Mix in the vegetable oil, coconut milk, vinegar and vanilla and stir. It will be quite a thick batter, but take care not to mix too much.

4. Divide the batter between both pans evenly and smooth out the top best you can - the thickness of the batter can make this a little hard but just do your best.

5. Bake for around 30 minutes, check by inserting a skewer into the middle to see if it comes out clean. Leave to cool completely before frosting.

Frosting

1. I recommend using either a stand mixer or hand mixer for this process - however it can be done by hand - it’s just hard.

2. Combine the cream cheese and the vegetable shortening in a mixer until light and fluffy.

3. Add in the icing sugar - about a cup at a time, along with spoonfuls of the coconut cream (make sure the coconut cream is properly solid when doing this).

4. Keep adding the icing sugar until it is all gone and the frosting is mixed well - but still nice and fluffy.

5. You can frost the cake however you like, I recommend a layer in-between the two cakes and some on top. While I did frost all the sides, it can be tricky to do without creating a bit of a mess and potentially ruining the cake - however as long as it tastes good does it really matter what it looks like?

6. You can decorate with a little left over desiccated coconut and kind of whatever you like. I used fresh raspberries, but that’s just because raspberries make everything better. The cake will last roughly three days before becoming stale, and tends to dry out a little if kept in the fridge. Still delicious though!

Pasta Puttanesca | The Bad Beginning

For most of the afternoon, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny cooked the puttanesca sauce according to the recipe. Violet roasted the garlic and washed and chopped the anchovies. Klaus peeled the tomatoes and pitted the olives. Sunny banged on a pot with a wooden spoon, singing a rather repetitive song she had written herself. And all three of the children felt less miserable than they had since their arrival at Count Olaf's.
The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events)
Lemony Snicket

The intenseness of the Christmas holidays is finally wearing off and I've found myself with time to actually write up some of these recipes I've had waiting. Working in hospitality is both quite lovely and also so awful around the holiday time, while everyone is in a great mood and customers are delightful, I always find myself working a ridiculous amount - coming home and binging on Netflix and leftovers.So it was quite nice that Netflix released the new season of A Series of Unfortunate Events, it really reminded me that I had quite a few blog posts and recipes piled up on here on draft that had to be finalised and published. And this is one such recipe, probably one of the more notable and memorable foods from the beginning of the dismal series. The Baudelaire Orphans cook Pasta Puttanesca for Count Olaf and his troupe of performers - it maybe didn't go down quite so well with them, however, it is indeed delicious and super easy to make.

*Notes: the chilli is optional depending on whether or not you like a bit of heat. I also omitted anchovies, because I don't eat meat, I don't really think you lose anything by not putting them in, but if you want obviously feel free to put in 3-4 finely chopped anchovies. If you do not have a food processor also - you can simply mix the flours and water together by hand.

Pasta Puttanesca 
Ingredients
Pasta (serves just so many, I had pasta for days guys, and no matter how many times I tried to make less it didn’t happen. Or let’s say, 8.)
1 1/2 cups of Tipo 00 flour + extra for dusting
1 cup semolina flour
1 tbsp olive oil
1 - 1 1/2 cups of hot water
Sea salt
Fresh black pepper
Puttanesca Sauce (serves 4)
4 cloves of garlic, sliced finely
2 tbsp capers, drained
1/4 cup black olives, pitted and sliced
5-6 large ripe tomatoes, diced and squished a little
1 red chilli, sliced finely *optional
Handful of roughly chopped flat leaf parsley
1 tbsp olive oil
Fresh black pepper
Sea Salt

Pasta

1. To make the pasta place both flours in a food processor (*see note) and briefly pulse to combine - add in a few cracks of black pepper and about 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt. Turn on food processor again and slowly add in the oil and hot water while running - it will combine slowly until it forms a giant ball of dough.

2. Remove the dough and flatten out as best as possible before cutting into quarters. Cover with a clean towel and leave to sit for 10 - 15 minutes.

3. If you’re planning on cooking straight away, this is a good time to get a large pot of salted water on to the stove to boil.

4. While resting the dough prepare a clean large area with a dusting of flour in preparation of rolling out your pasta. Doing each quarter of the dough at a time, use a rolling pin to roll out the pasta as thin as possible. I made this a few times - and trust me, as thin as possible still ended up being quite thick once cooked - so definitely go overboard in the rolling out of the dough. Having a pasta maker will entirely help with this step.

5. Once rolled out, cut into thin strips of whatever width you particularly feel like, I would recommend hanging the pasta once it’s cut, I just improvised something with a cooling rack, it will just help stop the pasta strands from sticking together. Repeat with the rest of the dough till it’s all done.

6. Cook the noodles a few batches at a time for about 3-5 minutes each and drain and toss amount desired with your puttanesca sauce.

Puttanesca

1. Heat olive oil in a large frying pan, when hot add in diced tomatoes with a pinch of sea salt, making sure to keep them moving in the pan to prevent them burning. Add in olives, capers, chilli and garlic and cook for another minute, mixing them with the tomatoes as best as possible.

2. Remove from heat and season with fresh black pepper, add in the chopped parsley and mix through before serving with your fresh made pasta.