🎶 on the eighth day of christmas, my true love gave to me… 8 mini coconut cakes…
7 tiny slices of almond cake
6 eggnog pots de creme
5 chocolate peppermint mini cupcakes
4 mini cranberry bundt cakes
3 mini lemon ricotta loaves
2 mini sorghum ginger cookies
and a mini chai latte cupcake. 🎶
Day 8 of 12 {mini} days of Christmas, finds me happily submerged in a winter wonderland of tiny white coconut cakes. And really… who doesn’t want to spend some time in a winter wonderland filled with cake?
🎄welcome to the 12 {mini} days of christmas – day #8! 🎄
If you’re wondering “why mini?” click on over to the first post in this series to find out. Otherwise, let’s talk about these adorable little coconut cakes…
I am totally in love with these mini coconut cakes. They remind me of tiny wedding cakes. Also, the coconut cake and coconut maple buttercream are scrumptious. Like, lick your plate clean kind of delicious.
But, friends, these mini coconut cakes are also kind of a pain in the keister. Before you click away thinking that you’re not interested in any recipe that the author herself would describe in such a way, hear me out.
If you love being creative in the kitchen…. if you enjoy the idea of devoting the better part of an afternoon to playing with frosting… if you take total delight in serving others the kind of food that will illicit tons of oooh’s and ahhhhh’s and mmmmmmmm’s… then you should ABSOLUTELY make these.
If you’re looking for more of a instant gratification kind of Christmas treat, the mini almond cakes or mini cranberry cakes are going to be more your style. Because, if you’re in a hurry or don’t enjoy playing with frosting, covering tiny little coconut cakes with buttercream can really test your patience.
BUT – if decorating cakes is something you love to do, these are a blast. Especially if you can settle in to your kitchen for a couple of hours, unhurried and with nothing to do except unleash your creativity on tiny cakes.
The coconut cake itself is baked as a large sheet cake, which can then be cut out into whatever sized mini cakes you like. I used three sizes from this Double Sided Cutter Set to cut out small cakes, smaller cakes, and teeny tiny cakes.
Some I left as one layer, and some I stacked. Then I decorated each of them slightly differently. This is the fun part. Pull out your decorating tips and have a blast.
Frosting tiny cakes
The smaller the cakes, the more challenging they are to frost. The trick is to use a small offset spatula and start with a lot of buttercream. If you try to frost a small cake with a small amount of buttercream, the buttercream will pull at the crumbs of the cake and you’ll end up with kind of a mess.
When you’ve got a lot of buttercream to work with, you can gently move the spatula back and forth, almost patting it around the cake. Once the cake is covered in buttercream, it’s easier to use the spatula to go around the cake and remove the excess.
Also – if you are planning to cover the cakes with toasted coconut, don’t worry to much about getting the buttercream perfectly smooth and even on the cakes. The coconut will cover it up.
Make a lot or a few mini coconut cakes.
This coconut cake recipe makes enough batter to fill a large 21 x 15-inch sheet pan. This will allow you to cut out quite a few little cakes, depending of course, on what size cutter you use to cut them out. If you don’t need quite so many, the recipe should cut in half pretty easily. The only measurement that can’t be split evenly in half is 9 egg whites. I suggest using 5.
A quick note about Italian Meringue Buttercream
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve likely heard me talk about Italian Meringue Buttercream on more than one occasion. But, if you’re new to the stuff – it rocks. I feel like I’ve advocated for this amazing frosting often enough to not do it here, most recently in this post about mini chai latte cupcakes. But I will say this: Make it once and you’ll rarely, if ever, make any other kind of frosting.
This coconut maple version is soooooo yummy. Maple syrup is a surprisingly delicious compliment to coconut. It’s a flavor combination I’ll be returning to again for sure.
Used in this Recipe:
Mini Coconut Cakes with Coconut Maple Italian Meringue Buttercream
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Mini Coconut Cakes with Coconut Maple Italian Meringue Buttercream
- Yield: 15-30 mini cakes 1x
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Pin RecipeIngredients
- 3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp cornstarch
- 1 1/2 tbsp baking powder
- 1 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 large eggs + 9 large egg whites, at room temperature (Save the yolks for Eggnog Pots de Creme or Chai Pots de Creme.)
- 1 cup + 2 tbsp coconut cream, at room temperature
- 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp coconut milk, at room temperature
- 3 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 tsp coconut extract
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 9 tbsp butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
- 9 tbsp coconut oil
- 1–2 cups sweetened shredded coconut, for sprinkling over the cakes
- 1 recipe Italian Meringue Buttercream, follow the instructions for the Coconut Maple Version in the list of flavoring options right above the recipe.
- Sliver sprinkles (optional), for decorating
Instructions
- Grease a large 21×15 inch sheet cake pan with coconut oil. Line the bottom of the pan with a sheet of parchment paper and grease the parchment paper with coconut oil. Lightly flour the whole pan.
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
- Add the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt to a bowl and stir with a wire whisk to combine.
- In a separate bowl, add the whole eggs, egg whites, coconut cream, coconut milk, vanilla and coconut extracts and whisk vigorously to combine.
- Add the sugar, butter, and oil to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on high for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the flour and egg mixtures in alternating additions, beating just long enough to combine each new addition: flour, eggs, flour, eggs, flour. After each addition, scrape down the sides of the bowl.
- Line your oven’s baking rack with a couple of sheets of aluminum foil. This is just in case any of the batter drips from the pan while the cake is baking. Scrape the batter into your prepared cake pan and bake for 25-35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out without any evidence of batter.
- Remove the pan to a wire rack and allow the cake to cool completely in the pan.
- While the cake cools, make the Coconut Maple Italian Meringue Buttercream
- Toast the coconut: Add the coconut to a dry skillet set over medium high heat. Cook the coconut, stirring constantly, until about 1/3-1/2 of the coconut is golden brown. Scrape the coconut onto a plate and allow to cool completely.
- Use round cutters to cut out small cakes in whatever size(s) you like.
- Frost and decorate each mini cake with buttercream, and sprinkle with toasted coconut and silver sprinkles if desired.
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