Piña colada cake

I thought of this before Deb posted, I swear. And you'll see it's not like her recipe. I've been very taken with the idea of making up my own recipes lately, especially ones that incorporate fruit and booze. So I thought, how can I turn a piña colada into cake? I thought about fresh coconut, or frosting with coconut, but I don't like coconut, except as milk. So I decided to put pureed pineapple in the batter and replace the milk/buttermilk with coconut milk. The frosting I finally went with was white chocolate based, because it sets better than a plain buttercream. I think I need to work on it a bit to get the coconut flavour to come out better, but for now, voila!

For the cake:
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
4.5 t baking powder
200g butter, melted (little under 1C, but use 1C if you like)
4 eggs
1 C + 0.25C coconut cream/milk
1.5 C pineapple puree
1 t pineapple essence (skip this is you're using nice yummy fresh pineapple)


Mix the flour, sugar and baking powder in a large bowl. Add the butter and 1 cup coconut milk, and beat till well combined. In another bowl, beat the eggs, essence and 1/4 cup coconut milk till combined. Add to flour mixture and beat till bubbles form in the batter. Grease 2 8in baking pans, and bake at 180C/325F for 40 minutes or till a knife comes out clean.

Frosting:

1 C chopped milk chocolate

1/2 C coconut cream/milk (thick milk!)

1/2C butter

1 C icing sugar
2 T dark rum (optional)

Melt chocolate over water. Cream together butter and sugar, and then add the coconut milk and chocolate and beat the crap out of it till its fairly fluffly. Frost!


To assemble:
Trim layers. Brush with dark rum if you like. Frost. Ta-dah! You can decorate with fresh pineapple.