One of the other girls mentioned it in another post previously that this sounds like really long commercial breaks between PW posts… aaannd we’re back! Yup, another PW recipe. This’ll make 6 so far! Absolute craziness. I’m surprised I’m still able to fit in the same clothes. You have no idea. I’m positive you gain weight just reading the recipes and another few lbs looking at the pictures we all post! Forgive me for that. We can all go on a diet together after this series is over.

This week was Julie’s pick again. She chose Billie’s Italian cream cake for us to make. There should be zero surprise that this has a generous portion of butter and cream cheese. It wouldn’t be a PW recipe without butter! I’m completely okay with that but I also didn’t want any leftovers so I cut this recipe way back. I mean seriously trimmed this sucker down, not even in half but quartered! I’m sure the girls thought I was nuts for actually measuring out my eggs so it was quartered perfectly, or as perfectly as one can be measuring out egg whites. Hello ridiculous!

The original recipe is a 3 or 4 layer cake, depending on how thick your layers are. I’ve only made a 2 layer cake before and that was obnoxious enough. Julie and I were on the same page and opted to make cupcakes instead of a layer cake. Cupcakes are cuter personal portions. I ended up with 7 cupcakes, one of which was stolen by a certain 2 year old straight from the stovetop. She’s such a trouble maker. I can’t really blame her for wanting one, they were tasty and that was before the frosting!

Oh and the frosting… creamy, cream cheesy, coconutty, chunkiness. A bit of explanation: the cake contains coconut and pecans, so does the frosting! The frosting looked amazing as I was whipping it into submission. Then the downfall happened… strips and chunks tossed in. I’d have much preferred a creamy frosting vs a peculiar texture. Frosting just shouldn’t be chunky and I wish I’d thought of that before tossing the coconut and pecans in as instructed.

If you love cake, coconut and pecans then you should definitely give these a try. But be warned, these make a ton or a big layer cake so you’ll want a soccer team to share this with.

Moist cupcakes filled with sweetened coconut shavings and chopped pecans. Top these off with a sweet cream cheese frosting, garnish with additional pecans and coconut. Enjoy!


(*Note the partially eaten cupcake… ahhh kids.)

A few notes:
-Unless you have a team to tackle this recipe with, cut it back at least in half. It’s a lot of cake!
-I liked the coconut flavor but the large shavings gave a peculiar texture to both the cake and frosting (especially the frosting). If made again, for the cake I’d chop up the shavings before adding to the cupcakes.
-While I’m not typically a fan of cream cheese (anything), this frosting was tasty probably due to the excessive amount of powdered sugar. However, I hated the coconut and pecans in there. Like I mentioned above… frosting should be smooth not chunky and stringy. It sure made piping a royal pain too. In the future I would keep the cream cheese frosting creamy and smooth to pipe, adorn the sides with pecans and sprinkle with coconut.
-Chill your frosting prior to piping so it’s a bit thicker and store the cupcakes (or cake) in the refrigerator after being frosted. The cream cheese frosting isn’t stable so this softens quickly when out at room temperature… this also proved to make photographing slightly challenging.
-The piping tip show above was too small! I changed my tip several times for styling and size purposes. The one above wasn’t going to come close to cutting it with the chunkiness going on.  If you leave your frosting smooth, any tip will do BUT if you throw the pecans and coconuts in you will absolutely need a very large tip OR just slather it on with a frosting spatula.

I hope you’ll stop by the other girls posts to see what they thought!
Running To The Kitchen
Wanna Be A Country Cleaver

And stop by Julie’s for the complete recipe:
Table For Two Blog

In case you missed any of the previous PW Wednesday posts:
Week 1: Fried Tacos
Week 2: Mushroom Sliders with Spicy Fry Sauce
Week 3: Carnitas Pizza
Week 4: Breakfast Pizza
Week 5: White Chicken Enchiladas