a year long journey for the perfect cake

a cake that reinspired me

Apr 18, 2025

My relationship with coconut in deserts (I like it very much in savory cooking) has been tumultuous throughout the years. Whether it is my disdain for Almond Joy (sorry) or my love for coconut cream pie, I can’t really explain my alternating attitudes. Coconut has always been, for the most part, flavorless. A meaningless addition to desserts that either tastes hollow or artificial.

I have been on a year long journey of rectitude when it comes to coconut, touring a million different types of desserts. Pies, cookies, and shortbreads; none of which cured me of my unstable opinion of coconut. I really thought deeply about what I wanted in a coconut dessert, and for so long it eluded me, until I inherited my grandmother's vintage bundt pan. A mustard yellow and chipped casted aluminum pan from when the bundt had its acme, it fired something in me that I haven’t had in a few months, which is an inspiration. Four months into the year, all elements of creativity in both cooking and writing have been drained from me (even now I have deleted this and retyped it about six times). Day after day thinking I can never make something or write something unique, I decided not to care anymore. This is the same cake batter I have tested over and over again for over a year baked in a eight inch Nordic Ware, always the same and stuck without my sanity, so I dropped it.

This cake really does deserve to be showered in toasted coconut

I instantly took to this old, used cake pan from my grandparents basement, that probably hasn’t seen the daylight in years, I found my rectitude. This whole time I was thinking about what I wanted out of a coconut dessert but IT was telling me the whole time, it wanted a giant hole in the middle. It tastes the exact same as the 30 or 40 times I made it before, but when I changed the physical structure it felt like something different. Something better. The experience of eating is changed so much just based on changing the structure of food. Cutting a carrot irregularly, smashing the cucumber instead of slicing it or baking this cake in the pan it wants to be baked in. A bundt is just more exciting to serve for a group of people, It grabs attention that normal rounded cake doesn’t. It gives this “thrown to the side” cake that may have been lost in my notebook the chance to be what it has become, my favorite cake.

Coconut Bundt Cake

tools -

stand or hand mixer

12 cup bundt pan

Ingredients

2 ½ cups of all purpose flour / 362g
2 cups of shredded, unsweetened coconut / 170g
1 ½ tsp of baking powder
½ tsp of baking soda
1 ½ tsp of kosher salt
1 cup of buttermilk / 215g
½ cup of melted coconut oil / 113g
2 ½ cups of white sugar / 500g
2 sticks of unsalted, room temperature butter / 227g
4 large eggs / 200g
Shredded coconut for topping

Sour cream glaze

1 cup of powdered sugar / 120g
⅓ cup of sour cream / 113g
Kosher salt

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Prepare the bundt pan with either nonstick spray or to lightly grease with butter.
Melt the coconut oil and set aside to cool.
In a large bowl combine all of the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and soda, coconut and kosher salt.
In a stand mixer or using a hand mixer, add in softened butter and sugar. Mix on medium high heat until the butter and sugar have creamed together and slightly lightened in color, around 4-5 minutes. Then, while mixing on medium low, slowly stream in the coconut oil and continue to mix for another 3-5 minutes until a pale white color. Once the mixture is lightened in color, add in the eggs beating in one at a time.
On low speed, alternate adding the dry ingredients and the buttermilk (dry in 1/3s and buttermilk in ½) until just barely mixed together. Once barely incorporated, mix by hand to ensure no overmixing happens.
Transfer the batter to the prepared bundt pan and cook for 55-65 minutes or until the cake has fully browned and is releasing from the sides of the pan (or comes out clean with a cake tester).
Allow to fully cool at room temperature before removing from the pan.
Once the cake is cooled, combine the sour cream and powdered sugar with a pinch of salt and mix until desired consistency.
Top with the sour cream glaze and toasted shredded coconut.