Making Your Cake And Eating It Too

Anyone who knows me knows I'm not much for cooking and baking. Nor am I a big fan of cake. (I'm more a pie person.) But about a month ago, I began thinking about coconut cake which I do like. I decided I would make myself a coconut cake for my birthday.
At first I was going to make a round three layer cake, but to do so I would have to buy or borrow three round cake pans. Then I read a recipe for something called Coconut Poke Cake. It sounded good. It looked easy to make and I could make it in my 9"x13" cake pan. The only thing I worried about was finding one of the ingredients - cream of coconut.*



As you can see, I couldn't wait until my birthday tomorrow to try my cake after it was made and frosted. It is good. Very coco-nutty. If anything, it is a bit too sweet for me, but that may be from the cool whip frosting.
All the coconut poke cake recipes I found were very similar. Here is the one I used from All Recipes.com:

Ingredients: 1 pkg white cake mix (I used Golden Vanilla)
1 - 14 oz can cream of coconut
1 - 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
1 - 16 oz pkg frozen whipped topping (thawed)
1 - 8 oz pkg flaked coconut

Directions: Prepare and bake cake according to pkg directions. Remove cake from oven. While still hot, use a utility fork to poke holes all over the top of the cake.

Mix cream of coconut and sweetened condensed milk together. Pour over the top of the still hot cake. Let cake cool completely then frost with the whipped topping. Top with the flaked coconut. Keep cake refrigerated.

I mixed some of the flaked coconut into the whipped topping first, then used the rest to sprinkle on top afterwards.

*Our local HyVee had cream of coconut in two places - 1) in the ethnic food section with the Mexican foods and 2) in the liquor section. Interestingly the price in section 2 was about a dollar more than in section 1. They were different brands, but both were 14 or 15 ounce cans.

After making this cake, I found another coconut cake recipe using many of the same ingredients, but this one uses sour cream in the cake and instead of whipped topping as the frosting, uses cream cheese and confectioner's sugar. Next time I want coconut cake, I will try this recipe. It doesn't sound quite as sweet and I already know I like sour cream and cream cheese better than whipped topping.