Coconut Cream Cake

If you like coconut desserts, you are going to fall in love with this amazing Coconut Cream Cake!

Moist coconut cake layers are filled with an indulgent coconut pastry cream, and frosted with a light and airy whipped coconut cream cheese frosting.

Why We Love It

There are so many reasons to love about this Coconut Cream Cake! Here are just a few:

• Ultra moist and tender cake.
• Coconut flavor in the cake layers, filling, and frosting.
• The homemade pastry cream filling is heavenly!
• Perfect holiday cake, birthday cake recipe, or dessert for coconut lovers!

How to Make Coconut Cream Cake

We chose a twist on one of our favorite vanilla cakes for today's cake layers- our super moist Vanilla Buttermilk Cake.

Coconut cakes often have either yellow, white, or vanilla cake layers. However, for today's recipe we added just a bit of coconut extract for an added boost of coconut!

You can find our full, printable cake recipe further down in this post, but here is a quick rundown of our steps!

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, grease and flour three 8×2 inch round pans.
• Combine Flour, Salt, and Leavening: In a medium bowl, whisk the cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt for 30 seconds. Set aside

• Combine Wet Ingredients: In another bowl, add the buttermilk, vegetable oil and coconut extract.  Set aside.

• Butter & Sugar: In the bowl of your electric mixer (paddle attachment if using a stand mixer), add the softened butter and mix at medium speed until smooth.
• . Gradually add the granulated sugar and continue to mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until lightened in color and fluffy.

• Eggs: Add the room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing after each until the yellow of the yolk has blended.
• With the mixer on low speed, Alternately Add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of liquid). Mix just until blended.

• Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with just few crumbs attached. Let cool 10 minutes and turn out.

Coconut Pastry Cream Filling

Every Coconut Cream needs a luscious coconut cream filling! This Coconut Pastry Cream recipe is wonderfully rich, creamy, and has amazing coconut flavor. It could be a dessert all by itself.

What is Pastry Cream?

Pastry cream is a flavorful custard prepared on the stovetop, which is a simple combination of sugar, cornstarch, egg yolks, and flavoring. It is easy to make and totally worth the extra few minutes!

Keep it in mind not only as a filling for layer cakes, but it makes a great cupcake filling as well!

We first used a homemade vanilla pastry cream in our scratch Boston Cream Pie recipe.

Today's coconut version of pastry cream also incorporates coconut milk, sweetened flaked coconut, and a bit of coconut extract. It is heavenly, and really takes the cake to another level of deliciousness!

How to Make Coconut Pastry Cream

You can find the full instructions in our recipe card below. Here is a quick look at our steps!

1. In a medium bowl, whisk egg yolks and set aside.  
2. In a saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch  and salt.  Whisk to blend.
3. Gradually stir in the milk and coconut milk. Cook over medium heat stirring constantly to dissolve the sugar. Bring the mixture to a simmer and remove from heat.
4. Spoon a bit of the hot mixture into the bowl holding the egg yolks, stir constantly. Then, pour the mixture back into the saucepan, whisking constantly until the mixture begins to thicken.  When it begins to thicken, remove from the heat, add the vanilla and coconut extract plus the cup of coconut. 
5. Remember the filling will thicken even more as it cools. Pour pastry cream into a heat proof bowl (or a small flat casserole dish for faster cooling).  Let it cool a bit then cover with plastic wrap, pressing the wrap against the filling to prevent a skin from forming.
6. Refrigerate until the cream is throughly chilled before using.

Whipped Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

We frosted our cake with light and creamy whipped coconut cream cheese frosting. It tastes just as good as it sounds ;0)

The consistency is much like whipped cream, but with a bit more stability and hint of tanginess from the sweetened, softened cream cheese folded into it.

Here is a photo of the whipped cream and cream cheese mixture just before folding.

...and here it is after the two are combined.

This frosting is just like the Chantilly cream from our Berry Chantilly Cake but with the added coconut flavor.

In fact, Coconut Chantilly Cream Frosting is a great name for it too. No matter what you call it, you are going to love it- and it also works great for piping simple borders and accents.

Assembling the Coconut Cream Cake

1. Place the first cake layer on the cake plate or pedestal. Spread with coconut pastry cream- I don't take the filling all the way to the edge-- I leave about ¼ inch to ½ inch space from the edge so that the filling won't escape when the layers are stacked.

2. Repeat for second cake layer and top with the third cake layer. You'll have a bit of coconut pastry cream leftover, some of which we used on top of the cake.
3. Next, fill in any gaps between the cake layers with the whipped coconut cream cheese frosting and frost around the sides of the cake with an offset spatula. Then, gently press in the sweetened flaked coconut. (We used Baker's Sweetened Angel Flake Coconut).

4. I love the coconut pastry cream so much that I wanted it on the top as well. I frosted the top center of the cake with the coconut pastry cream, leaving about 2 inches of space around the edge.

5. I then filled that space with fluffy piped rosettes of the coconut whipped cream cheese frosting piped with a 1M star tip. I also sprinkled a bit of coconut over the top as well.
6. This cake should be refrigerated because of the pastry cream and whipped cream. However, for best flavor and texture, remove from the refrigerator about 2 hours or so before serving.

That's it! Don't you just want to dive right in?

Keep this coconut cake recipe in mind for spring and summer birthdays, showers, or just because! In fact, coconut cake is a year-round favorite for us.

If you give this recipe a try, please leave a comment and photo below!

Other Options for Cake Layers

We love the scratch Vanilla Buttermilk Cake that this recipe is based on, but you can use any vanilla, yellow, or white cake recipe that you would like and just add a bit of coconut extract to it.

Other great options would be the layers from our Coconut Velvet Cake, our Vanilla Velvet Cake, White Velvet Cake, or Homemade White Cake!

If you prefer to work with cake mixes, those would work well with this recipe also!

Recipe FAQs

More Delicious Cakes with Coconut

If you love coconut desserts, we have lots of cakes that you need to try! In addition to today's Coconut Cream Cake, here are a few more favorites!

Coconut pairs perfectly with so many flavors! Some of our favorites are our Carrot Cake Recipe, Pineapple Coconut Cake, Italian Cream Cake, and our Lemon Coconut Cake.

Coconut Cream Cake

BY Melissa and Bebe

This heavenly Coconut Cream Cake has such amazing flavor! Moist cake layers are filled with homemade coconut pastry cream and frosted with a whipped coconut cream cheese frosting in this crowd-pleasing dessert.

Prep Time: 20 minutes mins

Cook Time: 30 minutes mins

Course: Dessert

Servings: 15 servings

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Ingredients

For the Cake Layers

• ▢ 1 ½ sticks (170g) unsalted butter, softened (holds it shape but dents when pressed)
• ▢ 2 cups (400g) sugar
• ▢ 4 large eggs, room temperature
• ▢ 3 cups (342g) cake flour (spooned into measuring cup and leveled off) (If you do not have cake flour see substitution in Notes below.)
• ▢ 2 teaspoons (8g) baking powder
• ▢ ½ teaspoon (3g) baking soda
• ▢ ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
• ▢ 1 ¼ cups (296g) buttermilk (If you do not have buttermilk, see substitution below.)
• ▢ ¼ cup (54g) vegetable oil
• ▢ 1 ½ teaspoon (6g) coconut extract
• ▢ 1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla extract

For the Coconut Pastry Cream

• ▢ 4 egg yolks the whites are not used in the recipe
• ▢ ½ cup (100g) sugar
• ▢ ¼ cup (30g) cornstarch
• ▢ ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
• ▢ 1 cup (242g) whole milk
• ▢ 1 cup (232g )coconut milk (Found on the baking isle. You can substitute evaporated coconut milk, but not cream of coconut )
• ▢ 1 cup (85g) sweetened flaked coconut ( we use Bakers Angel Flake)
• ▢ 1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla extract
• ▢ ½ teaspoon (2g) coconut extract

Coconut Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting

• ▢ 8 oz cream cheese, softened (We used one 8 oz package, full fat)
• ▢ 1 cup (115g) conefctioners sugar, measure then sift
• ▢ 1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla extract
• ▢ ½ teaspoon (2g) coconut extract
• ▢ 1 ½ cups (348g) heavy whipping cream

Decoration:

• ▢ 14 oz (396g) bag of Sweetened Coconut (We use Baker's Sweetened Angel Flake Coconut)

Instructions

For the Cake Layers

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, grease and flour three 8×2 inch round pans.
• In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt for 30 seconds. Set aside
• In another bowl, add the buttermilk, oil, vanilla extract, and coconut extract.  Set aside..
• In the bowl of your mixer, add the butter and mix at medium speed until smooth. Gradually add the sugar and continue to mix on medium speed for 3 to 5 minutes until lightened in color and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time mixing until the yellow of the yolk disappears.
• With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients (3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of liquid). After the last addition, slightly increase the mixing speed until combined.
• Do not mix above medium speed or over mix the cake batter.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with just few crumbs attached. Let cool 10 minutes and turn out.

For the Coconut Pastry Cream

• In a medium bowl, whisk egg yolks and set aside.  
• In a saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch  and salt.  Whisk to blend.
• Gradually stir in the milk and coconut milk.
• Cook over medium heat stirring constantly to dissolve the sugar.
• Bring the mixture to a simmer.  Remove the saucepan from the heat.  Spoon ¼ to ½ cup of the hot mixture into the bowl holding the egg yolks, stir constantly to temper the eggs. (You are tempering the eggs so you will not have small pieces of scrambled egg when you pour them back into the simmering saucepan).  
• Pour this back into the saucepan and return to heat, whisk constantly until the mixture thickens, this could take 3 to 4 minutes. When thickened, remove from the heat and add the vanilla and coconut extract plus the cup of coconut. The filling will thicken even more as it cools. 
• Pour pastry cream into a heat proof bowl or small flat casserole dish for faster cooling.  Immediately cover with plastic wrap, pressing the wrap against the filling to prevent a skin from forming. Refrigerate until throughly cold before using. If you do not need it right away it can be refrigerated for 3 days, possibly longer.

For the Whipped Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting

• Freeze your mixing bowl and beaters 15 minutes before whipping the cream (30 minutes if chilling in the refrigerator. 
• Use the whisk attachment for a stand mixer, or beaters on your hand mixer.  Beat the cream until stiff peaks form. This can happen very quickly so don't walk away from the mixer.  You are at the stiff peak stage when you lift the beater and the cream stands straight up forming a peak or falls over slightly. Keep in the refrigerator while completing the next step.  
• In another bowl combine the cream cheese, powdered sugar, coconut extract, and vanilla.  Beat until very smooth.  Fold this into the whipped cream. Cover and refrigerate.  If you are piping this frosting and it becomes too soft, just refrigerate the filled piping bag for a short while.  

Assembling the Cake

• Place the first cake layer on the cake plate or pedestal. Spread with the coconut pastry cream. I do not take it all the way to the edge- leave about ¼ inch to ½ inch of space so that when the layers are stacked, the filling isn't pushed out..
• Repeat for the second cake layer and the third. Fill in any gaps between the cake layers with the whipped coconut cream cheese frosting (I usually use a disposable piping bag with the tip snipped away for this.).
• Apply a layer of the whipped cream cheese frosting. I applied in thin on top because I also added a layer of the coconut pastry cream to the top center of the cake. Apply flaked coconut around the sides of the cake.
• I added a top border of rosettes using a large star 1M tip. (2D is a good choice also)
• Cake should be refrigerated. Remove from the refrigerator a couple of hours before serving for best texture and flavor!
  

Notes

Substitute for Buttermilk: No Buttermilk? Here is a substitution: To a measuring cup, add 1 Tablespoons vinegar or lemon juice. Add milk to the 1 ¼ mark, stir. Wait 5 minutes and it is ready to use.

Substitution for Cake Flour: Using all purpose flour (plain in UK) to make Cake Flour: For each cup of flour in a recipe, remove 2 Tablespoons of flour and replace with 2 Tablespoons cornstarch (cornflour in the UK). This recipe has 3 cups of flour so you will measure out 3 cups of all purpose flour, remove 6 Tablespoons and replace with 6 Tablespoons cornstarch, whisk to blend

Options for Cake Layers: Note that you can use any favorite vanilla, white, or yellow cake with this recipe- if you like to work with doctored cake mixes, that would be delicious too- just add a teaspoon of coconut extract to the batter.

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