Too Many Recipes! 2. Golden Aloha Cake

This is the second in a series in which I will endeavour to cook every recipe (one each week) from a recipe book I started compiling 27 years ago when I was 15 years old.  You will find all the background for this courageous and calorie laden endeavour right here

When I read the name of this recipe, Golden Aloha Cake, I couldn't help but imagine something rather magnificent and maybe a little bit flamboyant.  Something pineappley and exotic. Something that would give you a feeling of laying under a palm tree on the beach in Hawaii, listening to a bit of this.  If you read the first post in this series, you will know that I had high expectations of these recipes.  They en captured many of my hopes and dreams of how I would live once I was grown up and living a life of sophistication out in the big world.  Imagine my surprise then, to find out that it is really just a fairly ordinary cake.  It kind of matches the surprise I felt in finding out that being grown up was not always such a sophisticated affair as I had expected. Not that the cake wasn't very tasty and not that life isn't very pleasant.  But the cake just didn't really live up to it's name. Perhaps I should have been listening to that bit of ukulele music linked above.  Instead I was listening to Brooke Fraser's music which mellows me out no end. So you can choose which you would like to listen to while you read through the rest of this.  So here is a moment in which to go to the link of your choice (remembering of course to open it in a separate tab so you can read and listen at the same time.  I'll just do something else for a moment while you organise it all  .............................................................. Okay, shall we continue?  Which did you choose I wonder?

Getting back to business now. In retrospect, had I known what I was going to end up with (which I should have because I did read the recipe a couple of times before I started) I could have planned to deliver it with a bit more pizazz.  Perhaps I should have layered it (the recipe did mention filling but I chose to ignore it) and topped it off with some beautiful golden hibiscus and some sparklers.

That said, it was a lovely cake to eat.  Just ask any of my children.  Even Ari, who is not a big cake eater, was very happy with this one.  It had a beautiful soft texture and was sweet and moist.  The original recipe in my book didn't specify an icing beyond "white frosting" so I made up a basic lemon icing which I have included in the recipe below.  And with that said, here it is now!

Golden Aloha Cake

Ingredients
3 cups self-raising flour (or use plain flour and add 2 tsp baking powder for every cup of flour)
1 1/2 cups sugar
pinch salt
1 cup milk
185g butter, softened
2 eggs
3 egg yolks extra
1/4 cup milk extra
1/3 cup pineapple juice or pineapple and orange juice
1 tsp vanilla essence
white frosting
coconut


Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (375 Fahrenheit).  Grease 2 x 20cm (8") sandwich tins and line bases.


Sift flour, sugar and salt into a large bowl.  Add milk and softened butter and beat with an electric mixer on low speed for two minutes.  Add eggs and egg yolks, beating well after each addition.  Blend in the extra milk, pineapple juice and vanilla essence.  Continue beating a further two minutes.


Divide mixture evenly between the two sandwich tins and bake for 30 minutes.  Allow to cool in tins for a few minutes before turning out onto cooling racks.
When cool, fill, cover with frosting, sprinkle with coconut.


Easy isn't it?  But it doesn't say any more about what filling or frosting to use.   This is the lemon icing I made up.  The quantities are, I am afraid, estimates as I didn't measure anything so add the liquid to the icing sugar bit by bit until you get the right consistency.


2 cups sifted icing sugar
1 tbsp butter 
2 tbsp boiling water
1 tbsp lemon juice


Melt the butter in a small bowl of boiling water.  Add the lemon juice then pour into the icing sugar and mix well.


What's to like?
I liked that this was quickly put together using a method that I had not come across before.  I have to admit that creaming butter and sugar, although it is pleasantly familiar, is not my favourite way of starting a cake.  


The texture of this cake is really something.  The softness really makes this a very edible cake.  In fact ours lasted less than 24 hours - for both cakes!!!!


What's not to like?
Apart from the disappointment over it not being quite as special looking as I had imagined (and I am still surprised at my surprise because, as I said earlier, I did read the recipe through beforehand.  The lack of spectacular decorations called for should have been a clue that this would indeed be a pretty plain looking little number) there is really not much not to like, unless you don't like soft, sweet cakes.  I will point out here, and perhaps I should have done so earlier, that there is not a very strong pineapple flavour.  In fact I don't know that I could taste it at all.  I did think of putting a bit of Malibu in but wanted to make up the original recipe before fiddling with it.  Perhaps next time I will.