southern exposure

coconut layer cake and lemon layer cake
This month's Saveur magazine had a stellar article and set of recipes from Ben Mims about Southern layer cakes. The photos were spectacular---I bought the magazine in the first place because of the giant wedge of red velvet cake on the cover. I intend to bake each of the five recipes, so I started this weekend with the two that looked most intriguing to me.

I was concerned that they would be too sweet. There was just so much sugar in the recipes for the frostings, the cakes and the fillings. But I was pleased with the end results. Sweet, but not sugar bomb sweet.

The coconut cake was my favorite. The cake was a basic butter cake, but it was soaked with coconut water. The frosting was thick and candy-like and covered in a shower of freshly grated coconut. The longer it sat in the fridge, the better it tasted.

The lemon cake was the same basic cake but with lemon zest in it. Delicious. The frosting was a different story though. It was lemon curd with an indecent amount of butter in it. Too much for me. It tasted like the cake was frosted in butter rather than a lemon frosting. Yech.