This truly fabulous and delicious coconut cake is easy to make and even easier to eat! We love this moist and flavorful cake with marshmallow buttercream frosting and can’t think of a better dessert for Mother’s Day this year! With fresh strawberries coming into season, top your cake with beautiful strawberry roses and you’ll have a masterpiece to serve to your mom!
If you’re a coconut and chocolate fan, try adding dark chocolate chips to this delicious coconut cake batter before baking. This will make the chocolate lovers in your life so happy. We love it either way, with or without chocolate chips, but it’s always nice to have options and the more chocolate and coconut options in life the better in our book! 🥥
Delicious Coconut Cake Made with Coconut Milk
We use canned coconut milk, coconut extract, and coconut flour in this delicious coconut cake batter, which gives an intense coconut flavor. This way you can or don’t have to add flaked coconut to the cake. Since some people love the flavor of coconut, but “can’t” with the texture, this cake is a perfect choice for them. We have a family member who won’t go near coconut with a 10-foot pole, but actually really does like the taste. It’s the texture of the coconut itself that is the problem. We actually love to cover our coconut cakes with angel flake coconut, but often make it without to please everyone!
This cake kind of came about by a fluke. We have another coconut cake recipe that is also delicious, but one of our readers loved our Dark Chocolate Layer Cake so much, that she asked if we can make the same cake in vanilla or coconut flavor. We had never thought of doing that before, but started to experiment right away. We used the same basic recipe, but instead of using cocoa powder, we use coconut flour to achieve the same liquid to dries ratio. By the way, the dark chocolate layer cake is simply divine, too, if you prefer chocolate to coconut. If you love both, you may have to make a layer of each!
Marshmallow Buttercream Frosting
This frosting is incredible! The marshmallow makes the frosting super creamy and it frosts beautifully. Once you frost the cake, keep it refrigerated until about 20 minutes before serving. Once it warms up a bit, the frosting is light and fluffy and so good with this cake. We add both vanilla and coconut extract to the frosting.
We like to frost this cake naked, so you only need one recipe of the frosting, but if you like to cover the entire cake, consider doubling the recipe. You can also split the layers, in order to have four cake layers and four frosting layers. If you want to do that, simply cut the layers in half horizontally with a long bread knife and frost in between each half layer and on top. As you can see from the photo, you do get a few crumbs here and there from cutting the layers in half. You can try dipping your knife in hot water before cutting to minimize the crumbs.
Strawberry Roses
Strawberries go so well with this delicious coconut cake and these strawberry roses would be fun on almost any cupcake or dessert. Also, they’d be pretty on a fruit platter. It’s a fun project to make decorative roses out of the strawberries and it’s easy to do with a little bit of practice. You need a paring knife and a steady hand and you can make these roses in no time.
Fabulously Delicious Coconut Cake with Marshmallow Buttercream Frosting & Strawberry Roses
Equipment
- 2 8-inch round cake pans
Ingredients
Cake:
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup coconut flour (Bob’s Red Mill packages this)
- 2 tsp. baking soda
- 1 tsp. salt
- cup cold water
- 1 cup canned coconut milk
- 1 cup canola oil
- 1/2 tsp. cider vinegar
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1 tsp. coconut extract
- 1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips (optional)
Marshmallow Buttercream Frosting
- 8 oz. unsalted butter (1 cup, softened to room temp)
- 7 oz. marshmallow cream
- 3-4 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tsp. coconut extract
- 1 tsp. vanilla powder (or 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract)
- 1/4 cup milk or coconut milk (you may not use all of this)
Strawberry Roses
- 7-8 fresh strawberries
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350℉. Line two 8-inch cake pans with parchment paper. Spray the paper and the sides of the pan with cooking spray.
- Place all dries for cake in a large mixing bowl and blend well with a wire whisk.
- In a large measuring cup, mix oil, water, coconut milk, vanilla and coconut extract and add to dries, mixing thoroughly with a whisk or wooden spoon. Stir in chocolate chips, if you plan to add them.
- Divide batter evenly among the three cake pans.
- Bake for about 40-45 minutes, or until the cake tester comes out clean. Cool completely and remove from the pan. Spread frosting between each layer and cover the top of the cake. Decorate with strawberry roses and leaves.
For Frosting:
- Place softened butter in a large mixing bowl. Beat until creamy with an electric beater. Add marshmallow cream and beat until well integrated. Add coconut extract and vanilla powder.
- Add powdered sugar, one cup at time beating well after each addition until you reach the desired spreading consistency. Add a little bit of milk as needed for consistency. Reserve 1/4 cup powdered sugar for the last addition, in case you've added too much milk!
Strawberry Roses
- Using a paring knife, cut off the stem of the strawberry. Place the strawberry on its flat surface. Next, make four vertical cuts on the outer edge, leaving about 1/2-inch until the bottom of the berry. Gently push these cut pieces outward from the center of the berry.
- Make four more cuts in between and a little bit higher than the original cuts. Continue in this fashion until your reach the top of the berry. Gently push all cut “rose” petals outward to make it look like a rose.
