Amie’s Triple Coconut Cake: Dangerously Easy and Delicious

Name: Amie's Triple Coconut Cake
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 12 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 1 Betty Crocker white cake mix; 1-1/4 cup coconut milk; 1 15-ounce can cream of coconut; 8-ounce container of whipped topping; 1 cup flaked coconut

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Amie’s Triple Coconut Cake features a triple hit of coconut: coconut milk, cream of coconut and shaved coconut. You need this easy recipe if you are a passionate coconut lover!

Triple Coconut Cake drenched with cream of coconut — A good drenching with cream of coconut makes this cake moist and flavorful.

Have you ever remembered you were supposed to bake something for the office party or a school function at 10:00 the night before just as you were ready to crawl into bed? Hopefully, I’m not the only one.

Most of the time, I’m too proud (unfortunately) to run by the store and grab something in a hard plastic container, so I keep a few tricks in my pantry. I got this Triple-Coconut Sheet Cake from Amie, one of my favorite co-workers. The coconut freaks at my job, including me, go crazy when she brings this cake.

Here’s what you need to bake this cake:

Stocking up on a few staples is helpful to produce this kind of last-minute magic. For Amie’s cake, I make sure to keep the following in my cabinet:

a white cake mix
coconut milk
cream of coconut
shaved coconut
frozen whipped topping

All of these ingredients can be stored for months in the pantry, or the freezer. It’s my kind of recipe as I would rather do a hundred push-ups than make a midnight run to the grocery store.

(I detest push-ups!)

Baking notes for Triple-Coconut Cake:

I don’t know the origin of Amie’s recipe. However, I made a few changes.

Substituted coconut milk for water in the cake mix

Coconut milk makes the cake taste more decadent and less like a cake mix. However, if you don’t have coconut, you can certainly use water, instead.

I don’t use a cake mix very often, but my attempts to make this cake from scratch were unsatisfactory. The light and airy texture of a cake mix will soak up the cream of coconut better than any of my own recipes.

Heat (slightly) the cream of coconut before pouring over the warm cake

In my opinion, heating the cream of coconut helps the cake to absorb it readily.

While we’re on the top, coconut milk and cream of coconut are radically different and are not interchangeable. Cream of coconut is VERY sweet. Coconut milk is not.

Amie's Triple Coconut Cake — Coconut milk (often found in the Hispanic or Indian section of a grocery store) goes into the cake batter. Pour cream of coconut (found in mixed drinks area) over baked cake. Don’t confuse one for the other.

Sprinkled shaved instead of shredded coconut on top

Shredded coconut will still be delicious if you can’t find shaved coconut flakes.

Amie's Triple Coconut Cake--large flaked coconut — The large flakes are more attractive to decorate the cake instead of the smaller shreds.

How to poke holes in your cake

I used a k-bob stick to make the holes. Amie uses the handle of a wooden spoon for maximum absorption.

Amie's Triple Coconut Cake--spreading topping on cake

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