The coconut offers many a charm—sweet milk, squeaky flesh, and the architecture of a Flintstonian brassiere. It also offers many a frustration. To wit: the flake.
The snowflake drifts dreamily from its cloud. The corn flake crunches cheerfully in its bowl. Not so the coconut flake (or shred or desiccated nub). There’s something unrelentingly eager, unbearably chewy about it. It refuses to blend in. There’s no melting it into smooth glaze or creaming it into fluffy batter or grinding it into submission. The coconut flake just keeps on keeping on.
Reason enough to work out a work-around: coconut cake that owes its rich flavor and moist crumb to creamy coconut milk. Flakes optional.
No doubt many a baker considers flakeless coconut a mutually exclusive condition, a set of circumstances that cancel each other out—like the calculated error or even odds. But the two concepts can coexist in a single cake. In fact, it’s awfully good.
