So, as some of you guessed by my “birthday pie” post, it was my birthday on Thursday. I brought the strawberry pie to a regular Thursday barbecue a group of us have at work during the summer, then we had some of the same people (plus a few others and spouses) over on Saturday night for what was supposed to be smores, beer, and the last fire in our old fire pit. It rained and thunder stormed Saturday night, so instead we sat around our dining room table and played 10 person Uno. Luckily, I had a backup plan for the smores, and made myself a birthday cake. This is it:

Southern Coconut Cake

I read the note preceding the recipe for the Southern (Manhattan) Coconut Cake, and decided to eliminate the “(Manhattan)” and go all the way Southern with seven minute frosting instead of buttercream. Hardly anything is “too sweet” for my tastes. I used a recipe from the Pillsbury Cookbook. Everyone loved it. Even people who normally don’t go for cake finished off their pieces. I didn’t bother dusting it with grated coconut because of my own personal tastes. I like the flavour of coconut, but the texture isn’t my favourite, so this was perfect for me.

By the way, here’s my post for the Lemon Canadian Crown that the other heavenly cake bakers made this past weekend. Apologies for not posting on Monday, but we took a vacation day yesterday, so it felt more like Saturday than Monday, and I forgot to write up this post.

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