okay, so now that we’ve eaten The Cake, here’s the rundown: over all, the icing and the coconut filling were awesome. the cake itself was dense and a little dry. some notes (bear with me, people, baking is Science and requires lab documentation as such):

– the most likely cause of the dense cake is that my baking soda and baking powder are old – i’ve heard you should replace those yearly, and i’m pretty sure i’m still on my first can of baking powder since…oh, i started cooking for myself. which would make it about 10 years old. they should sell that stuff in smaller quantities.

– never mind with slicing the cake rounds in half (creating four very thin layers). i’d just make the same quantity of filling and slather on a much thicker layer between the two cake layers, instead of thinner layers between 4 rounds of cake.

– the directions just tell you to spread the filling to the far edge of each layer, but i’d go in and pipe a line of icing around the edge. it’ll keep the filling in and make it easier to ice the outside. i might go so far as to put a layer of icing between cake rounds in addition to the coconut filling, so that there’s some direct frosting-on-filling action.

– i also wouldn’t bother with the rum syrup. i couldn’t tell what it added to the cake (maybe if i’d used more it would have make the cake less dry….?) the rum-and-chocolate combo is a wicked one, but i’d just work the rum into either the icing or, more likely the filling.

– but i’m not convinced that more experimentation, beyond baking soda, isn’t necessary to get the ideal cake texture. this one was, as i mentioned, dry, and light in color. perhaps the flavor was intentionally mildly-chocolatey so as to contrast with the intense chocolate of the icing, but i’d rather just have good cake. so next stop is to experiment with different chocolate cake recipes.

overall i give myself a B+ for presentation (for my first from-scratch cake, it looked pretty damn good), and a B for flavor. good: using sharffen berger chocolate as the base chocolate. and the coconut/pecan/custard filling was holy-shit-that’s-good. bad: after spending $10 on chocolate, cheaping out on replacing my baking soda was a dumb thing to do, and the resulting cake was dry and dense.

the verdict? i’ll totally try this cake again (keeping in mind that it requires a very special occasion to spend SIX HOURS making a cake and that the ingredients were easily over $25). in the mean time, for my next dinner party i’d just as soon spend 1 hour making a kick ass fruit cobbler than spend six making this cake.

oh, but we’re not finished on the subject of cake, internets. next stop: meatloaf cake.