Cake from Scratch #1

I am so proud of myself for creating this goal (making three cakes from scratch). Everyone knows that I am much better at cooking than when it comes to baking. Unless of course, its chocolate chip cookies - then I make the best. I made the first cake out of inspiration. I got my Gourmet for this September and it was full of Latin American Foods. One of the cover pages featured a coconut rum cake and I was thinking, I can do that! I then decided to host an entire Latin American Theme Food Night in order for the cake to go with something. To make the actual cake was easy, however, there were a lot of egg whites involved and would you not believe that Miss Katie does not own any cake pans? So I had bought the tin ones, but didn't realize until it was too late that it was an 8 inch instead of 9 inch and for that extra inch, I should have layered the cakes and used two pans. needless to say, the cake kind of blew up I guess you could say. Okay not a problem - I jsut cut away the outside bits and dipped them in the cream of coconut. The icing too was easy to make, however, was supposed to be a little more drizzly than it was. The challenging part was the coconut. It was a battle and I won. For garnish and the top of the cake, you had to slice real coconut and toast it. Well, I have never opened a coconut before and after tackling the darn thing, I don't know that I ever will again. Here I was on the front stoop with a screwdriver and a hammer trying very hard to get the darn thing open. And then I hit myself with the hammer. But I pounded and pounded away and at last I triumphed. Until I got to the part where you need to pry the flesh from the shell. That I ended up using a screwdriver for as well.

The end result with one bruised thumb later . (see pictures that posted above)