Italian Cream Cake

A cake for when you have time to bake without time constraints and you are happy to wash some dishes. This bad boy took about 5hrs start to finish.

This recipe comes from Preppy Kitchen (https://preppykitchen.com/italian-cream-cake/#recipe). The only things that I have changed are substituting butter for vegetable shortening, because vegetable shortening is eyuck and also because I could not find any, and using desiccated coconut instead of sweetened flaked coconut, also because I could not find any. This recipe is pretty involved, and has a lot of steps, so it is a good one for when you have no time constraints, no workspace constraints and nowhere to be.

Ingredients:

For the Cake:

2 1/3 / 280g cups plain flour

1 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup plus 2.5 Tbsp / 265g unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 cups / 400g sugar, granulated or caster

6 large eggs, separated

Separate the eggs before you get started baking

2 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 tsp almond extract

1 cup / 245g buttermilk or full fat plain yogurt

1 cup / 100g desiccated coconut

1 cup / 115g toasted pecans, chopped*

For the Frosting:

16oz / 450g full fat cream cheese, at room temperature

1 1/2 cups / 340g unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

7 cups / 850g icing sugar, sifted

I ended up using closer to a kg, so it is helpful to have some extra on hand

For the Garnish:

Toasted pecans

I used the leftovers of the 200g bag that I toasted

Desiccated coconut

I just used the few tablespoons remaining in the bag

Whatever the hell else you want

I used some silver balls, because they look rather festive

Instructions:

For the Cake:

Preheat the oven to 350˚F / 180˚C and grease and flour 3 x 8" cake pans, or use spray.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter until smooth, and then beat in the sugar until light and fluffy, c. 3 minutes.

Beat in the egg yolks one at a time, scraping the bowl down in between each addition.

Scrape the bowl after the last addition, and beat in the vanilla and almond extracts.

With the mixer on low, add the flower mixture, alternating with the buttermilk/yogurt, in 3 additions, starting and ending with the flower mixture.

Mix in the desiccated coconut and toasted pecans.

In a separate bowl with clean beaters, or using the whisk attachment of a stand mixer, beat the egg whites on medium high until stiff peaks form.

In three additions, fold the egg whites into the batter.

Divide the batter evenly among the cake pans, and bake for 30 minutes, or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

Allow to cool in the pans for 15 minutes before inverting onto a wire rack to cool completely.

For the Frosting:

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese, butter and vanilla extract on medium low speed until smooth.

With the mixer on a low speed, gradually mix in the icing sugar until combined.

A tea towel is your friend here to avoid the dreaded sticky and messy icing sugar billows.

The icing will get soupy at first, but you just have to keep adding more and more sugar.

Increase the speed to medium low and beat until thick and fluffy, c. 1 minute.

Ooooh yeah, just look at that supersweet smooth sugary goodness

For the Assembly:

Assembling the cake is pretty straightforward. I put some extra chopped pecans and desiccated coconut between the layers to add a bit of texture. I am a big fan of flooding the top with decorations, as I have done with the pecans, coconut and silver balls, as it covers up any imperfections in the icing and it looks pretty.

I ended up icing this in three additions, a crumb coat, a second coat and a third coat because some of the layers were still visible. The above photos only show the first two coats. This is a dark cake to cover, and cream cheese icing is not as forgiving as buttercream so it is likely that there will be visible layers through the icing.

Keeping the icing and the cake cold is imperative, otherwise the cream cheese icing gets all soupy and drippy, as it is wont to do. Putting the icing and the cake in the refrigerator for a few minutes from time to time helps a lot to keep the icing firm.

*To toast the pecans, preheat the oven to 350˚F / 180˚C. Lay the pecans out in a single layer on a baking tray, and toast until fragrant, c.7-8 minutes. Allow to rest until cool enough to handle before chopping.