Coconut Cream Cheese Icing

For Mother's Day yesterday I brought the desserts for the dinner gathering we had with Frank's family. Since Frank's mom absolutely loves coconut, I decided that for one of the desserts I would make would be a chocolate cake with coconut cream cheese icing.

For the cake I used Ina Garten's Beatty's Chocolate Cake recipe. It makes an awesome, moist cake and is one of my very favorites. Be warned, however, that if you make this cake that because it is so light it is a little on the fragile side. If you make it you definitely need to line the bottom of the pans with parchment paper as the recipe states in order to get the cake to release without sticking. One time when I was out of parchment paper I just buttered and floured the pan and had some issues getting the cake to release properly.

For the icing I used my coconut cream cheese icing recipe. Due to the flaked coconut in the icing, you can't get the icing to be super smooth on the cake, but it is so delicious that it doesn't really matter. I will always choose taste over aesthetics any day with my baking.

Once the cakes were cooled I iced the two layers of chocolate cake with the coconut cream cheese icing and then topped it with some more flaked coconut for fun.

Frank's mom really loved the cake and it was a big hit with everyone at dinner yesterday. It is definitely a combination I will make again. 

Ingredients List
- 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 4 cups powdered sugar (about 1 lb.)
- 2 Tbsp. coconut milk
- 1-1/2 cups flaked coconut 

Directions
- Cream butter, cream cheese in mixer with vanilla extract
- Mix in powdered sugar one cup at a time
- Stir in coconut milk to achieve desired consistency
- Fold in flaked coconut with spatula 

Tips and Tricks
- To achieve the desired consistency, if the icing is too thin add more powdered sugar and if it is too thick add more coconut milk
- You can add a teaspoon of coconut extract if you want to intensify the coconut flavor
- Because of the cream cheese in the frosting it is best to keep the iced cake in the refrigerator until serving