YouTube Transcript:
Claire Saffitz Makes The Ultimate Coconut Layer Cake | Dessert Person
Skip watching entire videos - get the full transcript, search for keywords, and copy with one click.
Share:
Video Transcript
Available languages:
View:
This coconut cake is as much about
texture as it is about flavor. And
that's what dessert should be. It should
be both. Hi everyone. I'm Claire Safets.
Welcome to my home kitchen. We're making
a layer cake. I haven't made a layer
cake in so long. It's coconut cake and
it's buttery and delicious. And I'm
going to show you a really cool type of
frosting called a German buttercream.
Almost like a whipped cream texture.
It's really special. And the cake is
Dessert [Music]
[Music] person.
This recipe is sort of a modification of
the coconut layer cake in dessert
person, which has a like a separate
filling and uses a lot of fresh coconut.
So, this is like a little bit more
streamlined. This time I'm just going to
do one frosting. This kind of German
buttercream that I'm going to put in
between the layers and also to cover the
cake. The version in dessert person was
based on a recipe that I made like so
many years ago, like forever ago. That
was a Paul Purdome recipe from his, you
know, longgone restaurant called Kaul's.
And it starts by cracking open like six
whole coconuts. So we don't have to do
that here. This one we're going to use
some dried coconut, some coconut milk,
some coconut oil, and get tons of
coconut flavor. I'm not using extract. I
don't love the very kind of like
artificial coconut flavor that you get
from extract that makes you feel like
you're eating suntan lotion. We're going
for natural coconut flavor here, but
also like a very buttery rich cake. So,
I'm very excited to show you
for the cake layers. I have over here
some cake flour, couple sticks of
butter, granulated sugar, four large
eggs, kosher salt, baking powder. This
is virgin coconut oil. So virgin is the
unrefined which has the coconut aroma
and flavor in it. I'm using coconut
milk. This is going to go into the
batter and also some of it gets reserved
for um soaking the layers to prevent
them from drying out. For the frosting
and assembly, so I have four egg yolks,
a cup of milk, three sticks of butter, 2
tablespoons of the virgin coconut oil.
That's going to also help to perfume the
frosting and give it coconut flavor.
cornstarch, half of a vanilla bean, more
granulated sugar, and unsweetened
coconut flakes, which I toast and they
coat the outside of the cake, and the
whole thing is like so fluffy and fun-l
lookinging. So, you can see that there's
like a lot of cross utilization of
ingredients between the frosting and the
cake layers. In terms of special
equipment, it's definitely much easier
to make this recipe with a stand mixer
as opposed to a hand mixer. So, I'm
going to use that. I have the paddle and
I'll also grab the whisk for the
frosting. I'm going to need a small
saucepan because there's a the custard
component of the frosting is cooked. And
importantly, I have three 8 in aluminum
cake pans. And I precut little rounds of
Before I get into the recipe, I want to
thank our friends at KY for sponsoring
this episode. Today, I'm making coconut
cake. We have butter in the cake. We
have butter in the frosting. KY Gold
butter makes the richest, silkiest,
creamiest buttercream frosting, but it's
also my butter of choice just for all my
baking and eating at home. I love it
because it's so spreadable. It has that
pure butter flavor. It's really kind of
my all-purpose butter, and for my money,
it's the best butter you can buy in the
supermarket. All their products are made
from milk from cows that graze on grass
on family-owned farms in Ireland. I use
it for cooking eggs, just on toast and
my chocolate chip cookies. I love
browning it for recipes because there's
just so many milk solids and it gets so
toasty and so flavorful. So, I hope you
check it out. If you go to the link
below, you can learn more the link in
the description. And now back to the recipe.
I have all my ingredients at room temp,
which is very important. I'm going to
get my oven on 350.
So, you want all of your ingredients at
room temperature because this is a
butter-based cake and the butter is room
temp. And that is going to allow me to
cream together the butter and sugar to
work some air into the mixture so I have
fluffy light cake. And if your eggs or
like your, you know, coconut milk or,
you know, dairy component is cold, it
causes the butter to harden and then you
lose that texture. So I have my coconut
oil, which is 3 tablespoons. That's
going to go into the batter. But I have
just the jar here. I'm going to use this
to grease my pans.
It's very room temp in in our kitchen.
And the coconut oil is halfway
solidified. soft enough that I can brush
it with a brush. If you're in a cold
kitchen and the coconut oil is very
solid, you you will need to warm it up
slightly. So, it's like a little bit
liquefied. So, I'm just going to take a
super thin coating and brush it around
the bottom and sides. And then the round
of parchment goes in. And then I just
like make sure to smooth it out very
well to eliminate any air bubbles. I'm
going to do that with my remaining two.
Hold on to that pastry brush cuz we will
use it to soak the layers after they're cooled.
cooled.
So, those are my pans. Now, I want to
get my
coconut milk. Make sure it's very, very
well shaken. You want it to be pretty homogeneous.
And this is unsweetened coconut milk.
So, all of my coconut components are
unsweetened. And that's because there's
plenty of sugar in this cake from just
sugar. So, I don't really want to add
any sugar where I don't need to.
And it's full fat coconut milk, not
light. I mean, light would work, but I
don't know. It's like I just use the
thing, you know? So, I need to measure
And then I'm going to reserve the remaining
remaining
coconut milk in here for soaking the
layers. We'll bring this in when we're assembling.
assembling.
I'm going to just mix my dry ingredients
so they're ready to go. I'm using cake
flour. Cake flour makes such a
difference when you're making a layer
cake or any kind of cake. So, it's lower
protein that allpurpose and so it
produces less gluten. You just have
something that's lighter and more
tender. So, I'm going to add to my cake
flour some kosher salt and baking
powder. And I'm just going to mix all
that together. You don't need to sift.
If you have very lumpy flour, just whisk
it well. Let me just crack my eggs and
get these ready to go. So, four large
eggs. Also, room temp. That's really important.
important.
Okay. So, I'm going to get my butter in
here. I This is two sticks of butter.
Room temp. In addition to the butter,
which is really the kind of base of the
cake of it is a butter cake, I'm going
to add 3 tablespoons of that virgin
coconut oil. It's going to add just that
kind of like perfume of coconut that I
want. I'm going to add my sugar. And now
we're going to start
The creaming step with butter and sugar
takes a while. It gets a good like solid
5 minutes or so. We want it to be super
super light and fluffy and almost white
in color. I'm on kind of medium, call it
medium high.
So, this mixture is very light and
fluffy. I am going to add my eggs now,
one at a time,
and just beat these in. I want them to
And because they're the same
temperature, they mix in really smoothly
and easily.
I am forgetting something and I'm so
glad I remembered.
I forgot the vanilla. Almost forgot.
We're going to say that's a couple of
teaspoons. So, I have my dry ingredients
that are already mixed. I have my
coconut milk vanilla. We're going to
start with our dry ingredients and
alternate with the coconut milk. And but
you always begin and end with dry. So,
it's three additions of dry and two of
the coconut milk. And so, I'm just going
to start by mixing on low speed
and adding roughly a third of this mixture.
Then, I'm going to stream in about half of
of
And by starting and ending with dry, it
helps to maintain that careful emulsion
that we built with the eggs and butter.
You don't want to overwhelm with liquid
really cuz it will break that emulsion.
Then I'm going to add half of the
remaining dry ingredients or about a
and then
the remaining dry.
And as with any cake, you don't want to
overm mix. So as soon as you see that
last bit of dry flour disappear, stop
I'm going to take the paddle off.
And I do always fold by hand
after I take it out of the mixer. And it
just helps to make sure everything is
really uniform. It's common with a
butter-based cake to
have like more of the butter trapped on
the bottom and around the sides. And we
just want to make sure everything's well
mixed. So, I'm going to scrape down my
paddle. I'm going to fold this by hand.
And I really want to make sure I'm
scraping down along the sides and
underneath. Fortunately, with cake flour
and also just mixing by hand, you're not
going to over mix. So, we have our
batter. I'm going to grab my prepared
cake pans. And I'm going to use a scale.
With a thick batter like this that
doesn't settle into a flat layer in the
pan, it's a lot harder to guess if
you're dividing evenly. So, my three
pans are filled with equal weights of
batter. I'm just going to use my little
offset spatula to work each pan into an
even layer. I have my cake layers.
They're ready to go in the oven. I have
a rack on the upper third and lower
third. I'm going to go one cake in the
middle on one rack and then staggering
the second two pans on either side on
the second rack. And that's just to
avoid blocking the heat from any of the
cakes. And then halfway through baking
at like the 15minute mark, I'll probably
rotate racks and like side to side. So
350. And the total bake time, it's like
25 minutes. They bake pretty fast.
They're not that thick. [Music]
[Music]
This is the layer that started on the
top. It got a little bit done because of
the heat of the oven. So, I pulled this
one out first. The second two layers are
about finished baking. So, I'm going to
pull those out. They This one went
closer to 25 and the second two went
it's like been more like 30. So, I'm
going to pull them out. It's pretty easy
to determine dness. You can see that
this one's darker and it's domed less.
And that's because the heat from the top
of the oven. I probably should have
rotated them earlier. it like sets the
top so it doesn't rise quite as much.
So, I am going to do some leveling of
the layers before we assemble. And
that's for two reasons. One is it's
going to give me really flat layers,
which is going to be easier to assemble.
The second reason is because it exposes
some of the crumb and gives me like it
it creates the ability for the cake to
really absorb the coconut milk soak that
I'm going to put on it. So, I'm going to
let these cool and set them aside. While
my oven is still hot, I'm going to toast
my coconut for the outer coating. So,
here I have this kind of large flake,
unsweetened coconut, and I want to toast
it. I love the way that coconut flakes
toast. It's like they kind of toast from
one side. So, you get this cool like
ombre gradient a little bit of like, you
know, beautiful golden brown into white.
And this will toast very quickly. So,
it's not the kind of thing you want to
walk away from. You want to just check
on it after a few minutes and make sure
that it's not getting too dark. So, they
naturally started to pull away from the
sides of the pan as they baked. But I'm
going to run my little offset spatula.
You could use like a butter knife around
the sides just to make sure there's no
sticking. And I'm going to grab another
rack so I have a little more room. So,
I'm going to unmold these two cakes. And
it's just a simple flip onto the rack.
All right, these are nice and beautiful
golden brown
on the bottoms. These look great. You
can tell the cake is like so tender and
bouncy. And now that third layer
So, these are going to fully cool. I'm
I did forget about coconut. I told you
not to. And I pulled it out after it was
probably like five minutes. The top
layer of coconut got got like pretty
brown, but then when I mixed it up, it
kind of mixes with the paler pieces on
the bottom. And actually, it's very very
nice. So, yes, some there's a little
there's some darker pieces, but this
this looks great. And I think that that
color contrast is going to look really
pretty on the final cake. So, this is
done. This is going to cool my oven. I
turned it off. We're done with that for
now. And now I can concentrate on the
frosting and then assembly. [Music]
[Music]
The first step of making German
buttercream is to make this kind of
cooked custard/pudding
mixture. Going to add, this is just one
cup of milk. We're making a relatively
small quantity of custard cuz I'm just
making enough of the German buttercream
to frost one three layer 8 in cake. Um,
you could make more and freeze it. It
like a lot of other styles of
buttercream, it freezes very well. So,
These are all my vanilla seeds. Those
are going to go in to the milk and then
the pod also. So, I'm going to get this
heating on medium low. And now, while
that's coming up to temp, this is 3/4 of
a cup of granulated sugar. I'm going to
divide it. I'm going to add about half
of it to my milk mixture so it's going
to dissolve. Then, I'm going to add the
other half with my starch. So, I have
cornstarch here. This is 30 g of cornstarch.
And this makes a very, very thick
pudding. It's not like the consistency
that you would want for just pudding
that you're going to eat. It has a lot
of starch because that is going to
create the structure for the
buttercream. So now I'm going to whisk
together the cornstarch and sugar. I
have four egg yolks. So I'm going to
combine my egg yolks with my sugar and
starch mixture. So once you combine your
egg yolks with that sugar starch
mixture, you don't want to let them sit.
I am just vigorously whisking. I want to
lighten this. This step is called
where you're just really mixing it until
your egg yolks are light in color and
also in texture. Like there's a little
bit of air worked into them. Sometimes
it's easier to do this like this.
I have some steam coming off of my milk.
So now I'm at a simmer and now I'm going
to combine them. I'm going to take my
warm milk mixture and I'm going to
slowly add it to my yolks while whisking
constantly. This is going to gently and
slowly raise the temperature of my
yolks. If I were to just pour the yolks
into my hot milk, I risk cooking them
and curdling them. So about 2/3 of the
And now I whisk my yolk mixture back
Okay, the idea here is to bring this
mixture to a boil. And the important
thing is to hold it at a boil while
whisking constantly for I usually go
like 30 seconds or so. And that is to
ensure that the starches are fully
activated. So that cornstarch has like
its full is achieving its full
thickening power. And the eggs will be
cooked also. And the reason you don't
want to stop whisking is because you
don't want the custard to be in contact
with the hot pan and not moving cuz the
eggs will it will then overcook and the
eggs will you know make it just not
smooth. Okay. So I can tell that this is
Okay. So, this is very, very thick. I'm
going to turn it off. And now I need to
cool this down. So, what you could do is
if you were doing this a little bit
ahead of time, which is great. You can
scrape it onto like a shallow into a
shallow bowl or even like onto a sheet
tray and cover it with plastic. You The
covering is important because a skin can
easily form on the surface if it's
exposed to the air. So, you cover it
directly with plastic and then cool it
down in the fridge. Actually, I'm going
to add my coconut oil now. But I'm going
to just stir this in an ice bath. I want
it to be cooled down rapidly so I can go
right into assembling the buttercream.
This is for flavor, of course, but it
also makes this mixture a little bit
more malleable, like a little bit more supple.
This is that base for the buttercream.
And now I'm going to cool it down. I
have some ice right here. And I'm going
to just actually use the same bowl.
And what I'm going to do is just stir
the mixture, making sure to scrape the
bottom and sides really well as I go
until it's cooled but not cold. We want
it to be pretty room temp.
So, I'm going to set this aside. I'm
done with the ice bath.
I'm just going to leave it in here
because we actually end up adding this
to the butter. What I am going to do is
pluck out that vanilla pod. This I like
to wash and save for my homemade vanilla
extract. So, I have my three sticks of
butter, that's 12 ounces. I have found
with buttercream that if I start out
with the whisk,
depending on the recipe that I'm making,
there's a there can be a tendency to
sort of overhip it and actually sort of
work in too much air. I've started to
basically begin with the paddle and then
switch to the whisk to then whip as much
air as I want into the mixture. So, I'm
gonna start with this on kind of medium speed.
I'm going to turn my mixer up to kind of
medium high and I'm going to slowly add
my pudding mixture a tablespoon or two
at a time. It's very, very thick, but it
will smooth out into
the buttercream. And I just felt it.
It's nicely room temp. And once I see
the first addition incorporated into the
My last little bit of the custard's
going to go in. So, everything has been
added. Everything is really well combined.
combined.
I'm going to give it a little scrape
down. And now I'm going to switch to my
whisk so I can beat it and incorporate
some air and get that really fluffy,
light, almost whipped cream like texture
that I am going for. So there is some
like trapped butter around the bottom
and side. So I'm just scraping and
folding to make sure that once I pop the
whisk on it incorporates everything.
Do you know what this really needs? Salt.
Salt.
It really needs salt. I'm going to grab
a big pinch of salt. Uh, and I'm gonna
add it. And I'm just gonna get this whipping.
While this is whipping, I'm going to get
I'm using a cake stand. You could use
any kind of serving plate or cake plate.
I'm going to take my layer and I'm going
to flip it over. It's so bouncy. I know
it's going to be a wonderful texture.
So, see, I lost a little bit of the
surface from the rack, but that's okay
because we're going to actually take off
this layer. And see that crumb
underneath that like smooth top layer of
cake? That's what I want to expose
because I want all those little air
pockets and bubbles in the cake to like
pull that soak down into the layer. I'm
using a serrated knife. It's not super
domed, so I'm not having to take off a
lot. Really, what you want to do is just
hold the knife perfectly parallel to
your work surface and do little sort of
sawing motion back and forth.
keeping an eye on where the knife is
kind of entering and leaving the cake
layer and adjusting the angle if needed.
And one of the things I like best about
leveling cake is that you get to then
taste it. With a lot of kinds of
desserts, like you don't have an
opportunity to try it as you're putting
it together, but now you can try the
cake. It's so tender, not too sweet, so
so good. Vaguely coconuty. So, I'm going
to assemble directly on my cake stand.
If you needed this cake to be very
mobile, you can assemble it on a
cardboard cake round. And then you can
easily like transfer it between like the
fridge and a serving plate and all that,
but I'm just going to go directly on
here. So, I'm going to take my first
layer, get it on my cake plate, and
center it. And now I'm going to take my
coconut milk, my pastry brush, and just
give it a soak. Because I've exposed the
crumb, it really is like a sponge. It
will pull that soak into the layers. But
you don't want to really brush because
that's going to stir up the crumbs on
the surface. So, it's a dabbing motion.
So, I really just do one single round of
dabbing until I've covered the whole
surface. It doesn't really need more
than that. It's really up to you how
much frosting you want to add between
the layers. I usually think for an 8 in
cake, about a cup is pretty generous.
Now, with my small offset spatula, work
it into an even layer all the way to the
edges and even a little bit beyond. It's
going to make covering the assembled
cake that much easier. So, now I'm going
to repeat that leveling process with the
second layer. soak frosting and then
I'll show you how to put the third layer
on. I am going to remove the top just
like I did for the first two. And this
is that layer that started out on the
top rack and got like a little bit brown
early on. So, it did sort of stunt the
rise. It might be a little bit thinner
than the other two layers. And that's
partly why I'm keeping it for the top
layer because the bottom two layers will
compress a little bit under the weight.
It's still nicely baked, though. So,
we're going to soak this just as we did
for the first two. And now, the trick to
putting on your top layer to help make
the frosting process easier is to put it
on upside down. So, that means that the
bottom of the layer, which is like
smooth and sealed, is going to become
the top of the cake and it's going to be
perfectly flat. Now, this is the only
part that I think is a little bit
tricky. The layers are just delicate. So
you want to be gentle and careful when
you're basically flipping it over and
putting it on top of the cake. Once you
place it, you can like slide it around a
little bit. So it's not like you have to
do it all in one fell swoop, but
basically we're just going to kind of gently
gently
place it on. And then I always like to
get eye level with it. And you can see
that the top layer is a little bit
shorter than the other two. Make sure
that it's lined up with the other two
layers in terms of the sides.
Okay, this I'm done with. I'll save
these for little snacks. And now we're
ready to coat the entire cake. So, you
can see now because that top layer is
upside down, there's this like very
smooth, non crummy surface. For a cake
where the outer coating is just
buttercream or some kind of frosting, I
do recommend a crumb coat, which is a
very, very thin layer of frosting
applied to all the exposed surfaces. And
it acts to like slick any loose crumbs
to the side of the cake so that when you
then put on your final layer of
frosting, you don't have any little
crumbs in the surface. I don't really
need to do that here because we're going
to actually coat the cake in coconut.
So, it's not going to matter if you see
any crumbs. So, with frosting a cake, I
always like to start with more frosting
than I think I'll need. And then you can
take it away. I just think it's easier
to do it that way than to apply more.
Like, especially around the sides. You
can see when I put the frosting on that,
the whole thing like wobbles a little
bit cuz the layers are just so light and
delicate. I mean, I still have some
frosting left. This is more than I'm
going to need. So, I can always remove
some as I go. But, basically, you work
it across the top in a pretty even layer
and evenly around. And then the frosting
sort of cascades down the sides. If
you're assembling on the plate that
you're serving on and you want to just
protect it and make sure it stays really
neat, you can put little strips of
parchment paper all the way around the
cake. And then you remove them once
you're done frosting. I've just about
worked the frosting all the way down and
around the sides. I'm just doing some
extra strokes to make sure that it goes
all the way down to the bottom and I
have no areas of cake that are exposed.
I mean, I did remove a little bit of
frosting. Overall, I don't have such a
thick layer. Sometimes it can be hard to
judge the thickness with this method.
And so, sometimes I'll use like a little
cake tester or toothpick and just like
press it down to see like what is how
thick is that top layer. I would say
it's about a/4 in. So, if you feel like
you have a lot of excess, just scrape it
back into the bowl. I might just do a
little bit of rounding of those top
edges. And now I'm ready to apply my
coconut. It doesn't really matter how it
looks at this point. You just want there
to be the right amount of frosting and
it for it to be evenly applied. And
that's it. So here I have my toasted
coconut and I'm going to I left it on
the sheet tray because this is going to
make it easier to coat the cake. So I
So now I'm taking handfuls and I am
starting at the base of the cake and
kind of opening up my hand and working
my hand inward to apply the coconut up
the sides of the cake. And then I'm
working on the sheet tray because I can
kind of like tilt the pan and remove the
So this technique for coating any cake,
whether you're doing it with coconut or
sprinkles or like chocolate curls, this
is a nice method because it helps to
kind of contain the mess. Okay, so I've
worked all the way around. So anywhere I
see a bare spot, I can just apply a
little bit more coconut. I'm going to
remove excess from actually the top as
well because the top like you could just
pile it on. I don't want there to be so
much loose coconut. So I'm going to kind
of work some of that off the surface.
This is a loose coconut when you go to
cut it will just fall off. So I'm going
to remove all the excess from around the
edges. I do have some leftover shredded
coconut. Save that. You can put it on
ice cream or like on yogurt. The cake is
done. So, now I'm just going to kind of
clean up. I'll save the leftover
coconut, the leftover frosting, and then
we're ready to cut and taste.
I don't think I've had this coconut cake
in years. It's been a very long time.
So, I'm very, very excited. I love
coconut cake and I feel like I should
have more of it in my life. So, now this
cake is perfectly room temp. If you're
making it ahead of time, you can stick
it in the fridge. I would loosely cover
it with plastic wrap. It does benefit
from having like a brief chill before
cutting it because it will help you to
get cleaner slices, but you don't want
to serve it cold. You do want it to be
room temp because you need that
buttercream to like have that soft,
supple, smooth texture. And if you serve
it cold, then it just firms up and you
don't get that.
Oo, looks pretty good. Don't fall over.
Don't fall over.
Wow, the layers are so fluffy. The
frosting is so light. Also, we talk
about the coconut on the outside. Yes,
it's for flavor, but it's also that
little crunch. My favorite thing is when
you have cake that's like so light and
tender that you can pick it up on the
back of your fork by like pressing down,
this cake, oh my god, it's very rare to
have a cake this buttery that's so light
at the same time. And that's why I love
the recipe. I just can't imagine a more
perfect coconut cake. I really hope you
try this. If you're not a coconut lover,
ask yourself if it's because you don't
like that coconut extract flavor and if
you might actually like this version
because it has like natural coconut
flavor from using three different kinds
of coconut plus all the butter. It's
that perfect balance of flavor and
texture and everything. So, I want to
thank our friends at KY for sponsoring
this episode. I couldn't do basically
most of the baking in my kitchen if it
weren't for Cary Gold and their awesome
products that they make. So, I want to
thank them. If you want to learn more
about Cary Gold and their products, you
can check out the link in the
description below. And I hope you make
this. Thank you so much for watching and
Click on any text or timestamp to jump to that moment in the video
Share:
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
One-Click Copy125+ LanguagesSearch ContentJump to Timestamps
Paste YouTube URL
Enter any YouTube video link to get the full transcript
Transcript Extraction Form
Most transcripts ready in under 5 seconds
Get Our Chrome Extension
Get transcripts instantly without leaving YouTube. Install our Chrome extension for one-click access to any video's transcript directly on the watch page.
Works with YouTube, Coursera, Udemy and more educational platforms
Get Instant Transcripts: Just Edit the Domain in Your Address Bar!
YouTube
←
→
↻
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc
YoutubeToText
←
→
↻
https://youtubetotext.net/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc