Recipe for Coconut Cake

I was looking for a recipe for a cake to bake for the party we had yesterday.  We are in the midst of a heat wave so it's not great weather to bake.  I found a recipe that suggested baking the layers of the cake ahead of time and double wrapping them in saran wrap, then foil, and finally placing them in zip lock bags in the freezer.  By doing this I could bake during the very early hours of the morning before the heat of the day.  I went with this suggestion and it worked out well. 

 On the morning of party I prepared the cream cheese frosting and removed the frozen layers and frosted. This was great as the frozen cakes were not crumbly and frosted easily.


Here's the recipe for this  three layer coconut cake:

Ingredients for cake: 
2 boxes of white cake mix (I used Duncan Hines)
16 oz. carton of Sour cream
1/2 c. vegetable oil
6 eggs
15 oz. can Cream of coconut (I used Coco Lopez Cream Coconut) found often in the liquor section of the grocery store.
15 oz. bag of sweetened coconut flakes (I only used half a bag to cover the top  and sides of the frosted cake.

Ingredients for the Cream Cheese Frosting:
2 (8 oz. packages cream cheese) softened
1 1/2 cubes of butter softened
2 tsp. of vanilla
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar (you can use more or less sugar as you like). The recipe called for 2 #'s of sugar and that seemed too much for me. This amount of frosting was just enough to lightly coat between the layers and then top and sides of cake a bit more abundantly. 

Directions: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare 3 9" cake pans. I like the ones with the removable bottom. Grease and flour all the pans (I like to use a parchment or wax paper round on the bottom especially if you do not have a removable bottoom pan.  It makes a clean and easy removal of the cakes once baked. Bake for 30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  I always bake using baking sheets underneath the cake pans in case there's overflow.*Note if your cake pans are 8" or not very deep be cautious with your filling. This is a lot of cake dough and I can easily see how you would have some over the top overflow. I would say 3 -3 1/2 cups of dough in your pans and maybe you'll have some left over for a couple of cupcakes. Just a word of warning. Know your pan size.
Cool cakes and frost or  freeze before frosting.

Frosting:  Mix all the frosting ingredients except coconut. After frosting the cake press coconut to sides and sprinkle the top with coconut. I don't know if the freezing helped produce a moist cake but the end result was a very nice moist cake with good flavor. I might try to reduce this recipe next time to make a double rather than triple cake.  It came out nicely but it's a lot of cake so best to make this when you have a large group.

Another note: this is a very pretty cake and I could imagine using  some pretty colorful fresh flowers as a decorative idea.