Coconut Layer Cake

Hope everyone has a wonderful Easter and enjoy celebrating with family and friends. 

For our Easter celebrations, Sarah has baked us a Coconut Layer Cake with a marshmallow frosting.The Coconut Layer Cake tastes as good as it looks, and is the perfect accompaniment to chocolate eggs.

Coconut Cake

• • Ingredients:
  • 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
  • 2 1/2 cups plain (all-purpose) flour 
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 cups sugar
  • 2 large eggs, plus 3 large egg yolks (reserve whites for frosting)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon coconut essence

• Frosting

  • Seven-Minute Frosting (See Below)
  • 
    

Directions

Preheat oven to 175 deg C (350 degrees F). Butter two 9-inch round cake pans. Line bottom of pans with baking paper rounds.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla and coconut essence. Add flour mixture in three additions, alternately with milk in two, beginning and ending with flour. Mix until just combined.

Divide evenly between prepared pans. Place pans next to each other in oven; cook until a toothpick inserted in centre comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

Cool in pans 10 minutes. Run a knife around edges; invert cakes onto a rack. Peel off parchment; reinvert and let cool completely before assembling.

Assemble the cake: Sandwich cake layers together with a small amount of frosting. Cover cake with remaining frosting. Use blow torch to brown frosting.

7 Minute Frosting

3/4 cups sugar

1 tablespoons of glucose

3 large egg whites

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Place sugar, glucose, 1/4 cup water, and egg whites into a heat proof bowl. Place bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and stir ingredients until mixture reaches 70 deg C (160 degrees F) on a candy thermometer. (Takes about 2 minutes).

Place mixture in bowl of electric mixer. Beat mixture on high speed until glossy and voluminous, about 5 minutes. Beat in vanilla. Use immediately to cover cake.

Recipe Adapted from Martha Stewart.

{Sponsored Giveaway} Win a $75 Gift Voucher to Minted

We would love to warmly welcome our newest sponsor, Minted the online stationery, art, and party store powered by a global community of independent designers. The online store prints and sells the best designs from their community of graphic designers in the form of paper goods. They seriously have the best designs around!

They have a huge range of beautiful art prints, wedding invitations, holiday cards, party decorations, birth announcements, graduation gifts, birthday cards, and more. What we love about the designs is that they are right on trend, many have colour options, and options to insert your own photos to make personalised, one of a kind cards. You also get to choose the paper your product is printed on and discounts are given for larger quantities.

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Minted Online Store

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Minted are generously giving one lucky A Spoonful of Sugar reader the opportunity to win a $75 Gift Voucher to spend in their store. If you would like to be in the running to win, log in to the Raflecopter giveaway box below with your email address or facebook account and follow the steps. Do as many of the giveway options as you wish - if your already follow A Spoonful of Sugar or Minted on facebook/pinterest, just click the button below for an automatic entry. 

Giveaway is open world wide until April 6. Good Luck! The winner will be notified by email and announced here on the blog.

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Plum Friands

A few years ago, friands were really popular and were on the menu at all the nicest cafes. You don't see them around much any more but they remain a favourite with us. Who can resist a lovely oval cake made from icing sugar, almond meal and egg whites, and topped with a juicy plum?

As we are getting into autumn here, plums are all that remain of the summer stone fruits. They are so delicious and the perfect inspiration for these plum friands.

Ingredients

• 90 grams (0.8 stick ) butter
• 40 grams flour (1/3 cup)
• pinch salt
• 120 grams (1 cup) icing sugar (confectioners sugar)
• 60 gram  (2/3 cup) ground almonds
• 3 egg whites
• 3 plums, halved with stone removed

Makes 6

Method:
1. Melt butter in the microwave. Allow to cool.
2. Sift flour, salt, icing sugar, and almonds together. Stir to combine.
3. Lightly beat egg whites until foamy. Stir egg whites into dry ingredients, and fold until smooth. Stir in melted butter.
4. Spoon mixture into friand pan, lined with baking papers. Place half a plum on top.
5. Bake at 180 deg C (355 deg F)  for 15 - 20 minutes.
6. Allow to cool. Dust with icing sugar to serve.

If you love to cook with plums too, check out our Plum Pie with Pavlova Ice-cream

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How To Freeze Basil

The weather is finally starting to cool here after a long hot summer. We enjoy making lots of soups, casseroles, and pasta dishes in cooler weather. Our basil plant is thriving so we have frozen some of the fresh basil for use in our winter cooking.


Basil is an easy herb to freeze. Pick a couple of handfuls of leaves.

Remove the stems and any brown leaves. Wash the leaves and dry them in a salad spinner or with paper towels.

Place the leaves in the food processor. Process to roughly shred the leaves.  Add a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil and a pinch of salt to coat the leaves. (This prevents the basil from turning black in the freezer).

Spoon into small containers or ice cube trays to freeze. Label and pop into the freezer until you need some basil.

Next we are going to harvest some of our Mint.

Winner of Petal Fabric Bundle

Thanks so much to everyone for entering our giveaway to be in the running to win a bundle of fabric from the Petal range by Tanya Whelan. The lucky winner is Sandy A - we have sent you an email.

Thanks to Chit Chat Fabrics for sponsoring our giveaway. The Petal range will be arriving at Chit Chat Fabrics in early April.

Almond Cake

If you are after a lovely cake for an afternoon tea, you can't go past Almond Cake. It is a light, buttery cake, with an almond topping, and goes perfectly with a cup of tea.What we love about this cake is that the Almond Topping is baked on in the final stage of cooking so there is no need for further decoration.

Almond Cake

Ingredients:

3 large eggs
¾ cup (150g) sugar (granulated sugar)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup + 1 tablespoon (150g) plain (all purpose) flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
3 tablespoons milk
1/3 cup (75g) unsalted butter, melted

Topping:
50g unsalted butter
100g flaked almonds
¼ cup (50g) granulated sugar
2 teaspoons plain (all purpose) flour
3 tablespoons thickened cream (heavy cream)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F. Butter and flour a 23cm (9in) springform or loose-bottomed cake pan.

In the large bowl of an electric mixer, whisk together the eggs and the sugar for 5-7 minutes, or until thick and creamy. Beat in the vanilla. Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt and pour in the milk and melted butter, then gently fold until combined. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan and bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out moist but not totally clean, as the mixture will still need another 10 minutes of cooking. Increase the heat to 200°C/400°F.

Topping:

Just before the 30-35 minutes are up, make the topping. Place the butter in a saucepan over a medium heat. When it has melted, add the remaining ingredients and bring to the boil, allowing the mixture to bubble away for 1 minute.
After the cake has been cooking for the first 30-35 minutes, remove it from the oven and spoon the almond mixture evenly over the top. Place it back in the oven and bake for about 10-15 minutes or until the topping is golden.
Leave to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before placing the cake on a wire rack to cool completely.

Sarah was inspired to bake an Almond Cake by Technicolour Kitchen.

The Almond Cake is really similar in taste to our  Almond Cream Slice (pictured below). Almond Cream Slice is a family favourite and you can find our recipe here.

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Lollipop Centrepiece

If you follow us on Facebook and Pinterest, you might have seen the fun Easter tradition from See Jane Blog that we shared last week. Her children plant "magic" jelly beans on Easter Saturday, and wake up on Easter morning to lollipops growing in the garden. Such a fun idea!  When the Easter Bunny visited us (when my teens were little) he used to leave paw prints (made from flour) over the kitchen floor. Those were the days!

The Lollipop idea reminded us of the centrepieces that we made for a child's Enchanted Garden Birthday Party. This would also work well for an Easter or spring celebration. It makes for a sweet centrepiece and you can alter the colour of the flowers and jelly beans to suit your occasion.

Materials:

• Felt
• Buttons
• Bamboo skewers
• Green ribbon
• Cotton Thread
• Ceramic Pot (we purchased ours from Ikea)
• Floristry foam
• Lollipops
• Jelly beans

Cut flower shapes out of the felt. Using 2 buttons as the flower centre, stitch the felt flower onto a bamboo skewer. Tie a piece of green ribbon onto the skewer.

Fill the flower pot with a piece of floristry foam. Arrange the felt flowers in the pot. Add a few lollipops, and cover the foam with assorted jelly beans.

This project first appeared in Silver Magazine

Do you have any fun Easter traditions in your family?

12 Travel Inspired Tutorials

Over the past couple of years, we have shared a number of travel inspired tutorials on A Spoonful of Sugar. We wanted to group them together in one post - they would make great gift ideas for family and friends who love to travel.

To go to the original tutorial with step by step instructions, click on the title under the photos.

Felt Luggage Tag

Travel Neck Pillow Cover

Emergency Zippered Pouch

Eiffel Tower Smartphone Cover

Coin Pendant and Keyring

Travel Sized Laundry Bag

Pyjama Bag

Passport Protector

Tissue Cover

Ribbon Lanyard

Camera Cord Pouch

Drawstring Pouch



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{Sponsor Love} Easter

With Easter fast approaching, we were inspired by these fresh and pretty products from our sponsors.

Claudia in Sky Happy Land, Jennifer Paginelli (USD $8.75 yard), Chit Chat Fabrics

Poppies in Spring, Fabric Box (AUD $11.00 ePattern), Stitching Cow

Ellie Skirt and Lace Leggings Pattern (USD $10.95 PDF Pattern), Violette Field Threads

Madelyn Shirt Pattern, (USD $10.95 PDF Pattern), Violette Field Threads

Cross Stitch Daisy Ribbon (AUD $3.80 metre), Ribbons Galore

Australian Bilby Cookie Cutter (AUD $5.00), Antipodean Love

Mini Tulle and Pearl Flowers (USD $1.50),  Fleuriste Craft Supply

Birds in White, Riley Blake Designs (USD $9.50 yard), XO Gigi Fabrics

Regular Style Acrylic Buttons (USD $1.00), Fleuriste Craft Supply



We love our sponsors here at A Spoonful of Sugar, and would be thrilled if you supported their creative businesses. You can find their buttons over in our sidebar. Tell them A Spoonful of Sugar sent you :)

If you have a business that you would like us to promote to our lovely readers, please refer to our advertising page or email us (aspoonfullofsugargirls@gmail.com) for more details.

Camera Pouch {Tutorial}

I received an early Mother's Day gift this week from my lovely family - a new camera to take on our trip to Paris. I usually travel with my Canon DSLR but it is bulky and heavy to carry around, and I won't have Mr Sugar to carry it for me this trip. My Samsung Galaxy Camera takes lovely photos and with its wireless connection you can easily shoot and share. This will be perfect for blogging on the go.

I have ordered a case for it and have made a small drawstring pouch to hold the battery charger and extra battery. I used some camera fabric (Robert Kaufman, Boys Toys) from XO Gigi Fabrics which will make it easy to find the battery charger in my suitcase.

Materials:

• Aqua polka dot fabric measuring 5 x 14 inches
• two strips of black and white stripe fabric measuring 1 1/2 x 5 1/2 inches
• two lengths of white cord measuring 20 inches
• appliqué web such as steam a seam
• camera fabric

Method:
1. Following manufacturer's directions on the appliqué web, fuse the web to the back of the camera fabric, and cut out the cameras. I used a large camera motif on the front and two on the back. Fuse the cameras to the polka dot fabric. Stitch around the outside of the camera motifs in black thread.

2. Fold the black and white fabric in half lengthwise and press. Fold in 1/2 at each end. Pin along the short sides of the aqua fabric so that there is a 1/4 inch clearance at each end.
Stitch in place using a 1/4 seam allowance. Overlock raw edges. Press. Topstitch near to seam.

3. With right sides facing, stitch the side seams. Overlock the raw edges. Turn out the right way and press.

4. Thread the corn through the channel made by the black and white striped fabric. Thread one piece of cord through both channels and back out the same side. Knot ends together. Repeat with the other cord but threading from the opposite side.

It will be a handy little pouch for travelling.


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