The Monthly Recipe: Coconut Raspberry Almond Flour Cake

April 15, 2022 at 9:00 am (Recipes)
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Coconut Raspberry Almond Flour Cake

Coconut cake is traditional in our house for Easter but I’ve gotten away from the regular box mixes and sugary frostings so here’s this year’s version, using an almond flour sponge cake and cheesecake mousse. It reminds me of the old raspberry zinger snack cakes. J

Ingredients for Cake

  • 5 large eggs (separated)
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 9 tablespoons maple syrup
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 6 ounces almond flour (about 1 1/3 cups)

Filling

  • ½ cup Polaner raspberry all fruit

Cheesecake Mousse Topping

  • 8 ounces cream cheese
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup, (or sugar)
  • 1/4 teaspoon vanilla or coconut extract
  • 3/4 cup whipping cream

Fresh Coconut Topping

  • Meat of one coconut grated or a cup of bagged grated coconut

Directions

  1. Make the filling first and chill –
  2. Soften an eight ounce block of cream cheese on the counter for a couple hours or in the microwave on fifty percent power for one to two minutes.
  3. Mix with 1/4 cup maple syrup, or sugar, and 1/4 teaspoon extract.
  4. Whip 3/4 cup whipping cream and fold in.
  5. Chill completely.
  6. To make the cake –
  7. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  8. Prep 2 8-inch or 9-inch cake pans by greasing and lining with parchment paper.
  9. Separate the 5 eggs into 2 mixing bowls.
  10. Mix the maple syrup into the egg yolks then stir in the vanilla and almond flour.
  11. Using a mixer, beat your egg whites and salt until stiff peaks form.
  12. Fold the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture, about one third at a time.
  13. Separate the mixture into the two prepared pans and bake for 22 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
  14. Cool for ten minutes then turn out onto a plate and cool completely.
  15. Sandwich with jelly.
  16. Just before serving, frost cake with cream cheese mousse and sprinkle with grated coconut.
  17. Enjoy!

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Elmore Leonard and a writer’s leap of faith

April 7, 2012 at 10:33 am (Uncategorized)
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Our writer’s group met last night, only five of us but we had a really good session.  It’s always fascinating to see what twists and turns everyone’s mind takes with a prompt.  I shared a poem that I needed help with editing and another member shared the first two chapters of a novel for feedback.

I also brought an interview that I had read recently on CNN, Grit on Wry: A Dinner with Elmore and Peter Leonard.  I used to be a huge fan of Elmore Leonard, partly because I love a good mystery but mostly because of the humor, I suspect.  My favorite books and movies tend to have a strong element of humor, whatever source it comes from.  It could be jokes with punchlines or simply the gentle humor that comes out of everyday life.  In the article, the author says of Elmore, “He thinks that crooks are dumb, and that dumb is funny.”  I also love the “snappy dialogue,”  what you might call snarky.

A couple other thoughts really stood out in the article for me.  The first was the idea that there are great ideas, strange things, happening every day in real life, just waiting to be worked into a story.  I’ve definitely found that to be true but my strange things don’t tend to run toward the criminal, the way they do for Elmore Leonard. 

The other interesting thought was that at some point, you’ve got to take a chance and make a leap of faith if you’re going to write for a living.  The problem, the way I see it, is that it’s a long leap.  It takes time to write that great American novel.  Then you’ve got to edit it and keep submitting it until someone agrees.  You’ve also got to keep writing in the meantime.  It take a focus and a singularity of purpose that is hard to pull off when you’ve got a family and work demanding your attention, plus needing to build your name for marketing online.  I feel like I need to carve a tiny bit of time out every day just for a novel.  We’ll see if I can do that this week.

In the meantime, I’m still writing for Yahoo! Voices.  Here’s a humorous poem I wrote for Easter based on an incident I’ve heard about many times over the years in our family, The Day the Chocolate Bunnies Died.

 

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