Louisiana crunch cake..Coconut cake at its best

Cake Cake Cake...
 
Louisiana crunch cake holds a special place next to my heart. When we were in college, our cafeteria (God bless their hearts) had a fully stocked Entenmann's case, cookies, cakes, pastries, donuts all payable by meal card. We murdered those boxes of chocolate chip cookies. It was here I was introduced to the heavenly flavor of a Louisiana crunch cake.

The cake is basically coconut cake; a moist vanilla cake with a sugar coconut topping. I love it with a passion, when I was living in New York, as long as there was a box in the kitchen, you could not help but cut a slice every time you passed through. Entenmann’s is not sold in Jamaica so it is no surprise that I attempted to make this cake so satisfy my Louisiana crunch fix.

 This cake delivers with flying colors. So for this post I have two different methods.  In the span of one month I have made the cake five times. Every time tweaking the recipe to yield different cake textures. I Think the first time I made it was the best I will give a written direction for that one, it yields a softer light cake. The video instruction technique (which I got from a chocolate cake chef john made) yields a thick spongy and puffy texture. So depending on the type of cake texture you like you can do either the video direction or the written directions. 

Spongy cake video Instructions:

Ingredients (printable instructions)

1 ½ cup flour

½ teaspoon baking powders

¼ baking soda

1 cup sugar

1 stick salted butter

2 eggs

¾ cup buttermilk

2 heaping tablespoons of sour cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon almond extract

3 tablespoons white sugar

¼  cup sweet coconut flakes

Glaze

4 tablespoon melted butter

4 tablespoon coconut milk

½ teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon almond extract

2 cups powdered sugar

Fluffy cake instructions: (NB. this batter is thick not runny)

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Prep the non-stick baking pan by spraying with oil and dusting with sugar, sprinkle the bottom of the pan with the ¼ cup of coconut flakes and set aside
• Whip the butter on high until is pale in color light and fluffy
• Add the sugar and mix for another 3 minutes
• Combine all the dry ingredients in a bowl, flour, baking powder, baking soda
• Add the eggs, vanilla and almond extract to the butter and sugar mix
• Add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture alternating ending with flour Stir
• Stir in the sour cream into the batter and pour into the pan and bake for 40 minutes or until the tester comes out clean
• For the glaze follow the instructions on the video. 

Be prepared to make this multiple times, I bake mine in a regular cake pan, however a bundt pan is commonly used. This dessert never ever ever ever makes it past the 24h mark. If anyone who is not in the household wants a taste we have to cut a slice and set it aside for them. 

Xoxo Greedygirl