Put da lime in da coconut

I have a friend who had a birthday a while ago and I wanted to make her a birthday celebration cake. I asked her what kind she would like and she said "pie". Well....I am not a great pie baker...yet :) so I asked if she was to have cake, what kind? So she says...no frosting...no layers...not too sweet and I like coconut.

I found the perfect cake for her.

The Key Lime Coconut Cake in the March issue of Gourmet.

It is baked in one 9x2 pan.....1 layer.

It is topped with coconut....no frosting.

It has key lime zest and juice in the batter and on the top....not too sweet.

I made this just like the recipe says. I even found a bag of key limes at Wal-mart so I was able to stay true to the recipe. But jeez, have you ever tried to juice a little key lime? Or zest them? And I swear it took me like 20 limes to get the amount of juice the recipe called for. (I might be exaggerating a little, I didn't count while juicing. It sure seemed like that many!)

The recipe says to bake the cake in a 9x2 pan. Make sure you do that! I accidentally baked mine in a 9x1.5 pan (Why I have one I don't know) and the cake rose over and spilled onto the handles. No mess just a little misshapen cake on the bottom...nothing a knife and my mouth couldn't handle.

The end result was nice and refreshing. A great summer treat.

I would have liked the cake to be a little more moist...ahh, hate that word :) so next time I would double the amount of glaze for the top of the cake. I poked holes with a wooden skewer so that the glaze would get down into the cake. That helped a lot.

Oh yeah, I left out the rum as kids had some of the finished product.

Happy Memorial Day....let's not forget.

Thanks for stopping by.