Can this girl bake or what?

A few weeks ago one of my coworkers brought in a homemade coconut cake for the office.  I am not a huge fan of the shredded coconut pieces, but it looked so delicious I tried it anyway.

And was rewarded for my bravery.  It...was...delicious.  Three layers of cake with boiled icing in between and all around.  I had never heard of boiled icing before but it was shiny and not too sweet and totally yummy.  I was hooked.

As we were preparing for our vacation this year I knew I wanted to make a dessert to bring with us.  And since the kids weren't home I knew I'd have time to make one.  I decided to tackle the coconut cake.  Cecilia brought in the recipe and I looked it over realizing that (1) I had all but one ingredient on hand (coconut milk), and (2) it didn't seem too terribly difficult.

I got to work on it as soon as I walked in the door from work on Friday evening (we were leaving Saturday morning and I wanted it to be fresh when we got there).  Mixing the batter was quite simple.  Problemo numero uno was that I only had one cake pan.  So the other two layers went into pie pans and I figured I'd work it out.

Once the cake was done baking and started cooling, I began on the icing.  However, I was halted quickly when I realized I didn't have any eggs, and it called for 4 egg whites.  (This is not normally like me, but in knowing we would be gone for a week I let them run down to the 4 I needed for the cake.  I didn't realize they were also required for the icing.)  Anywho, off to Bi-Lo I went.  For the boiled icing you melt sugar and water in a saucepan then let it boil to a particular temperature.  While that's going on, you whip the egg whites and cream of tartar to soft peaks, then slowly stream in the sugar syrup and beat until stiff peaks form.  I was amazed that it worked perfectly.  And no worries that there wouldn't be enough icing - there was more than enough.

I forgot to trim the edges of the pie pan cakes until they were already stacked together with icing so I just went with it and crammed the sides full of icing.  It may not have been perfect, but it looked just fine for me.  Since it wouldn't fit in the cooler, it got it's own cooler bag with ice for the trip to KY.  It shifted a bit during the ride, but all in all was just fine.

And let me tell you.  It...was...delicious.  Just ask my brother in law Kelly who I'm pretty sure ate about 70% of it.  I'm a loser who didn't take any pictures, however, so I'm going to make another one soon and I'll post pictures then.  Until then...