A Not-So-Italian Cream Cake
By popular request! After a slew of emails asking for an Italian cream cake, I’ve finally created my own recipe that I’m excited to share with you today. Italian cream cakes are known for having a soft cake crumb loaded with pecans and coconut. I wanted mine to be plush and perfectly dense (but with a crumb closer to vanilla cake than pound cake), sturdy enough to handle three layers and keep chopped pecans suspended in the batter, yet still able to melt in your mouth. Tricky, right? Right. It took a lot of attempts to nail this one down, and ultimately, I ended up using a modified version of my Chantilly cake. I nixed the brown sugar so that the almond flavor could shine, used the reverse creaming method for a beautiful, soft crumb, and topped everything off with a THICK layer of cream cheese frosting, with only a few small tweaks from my well-loved recipe. You’re going to love it, even if it’s not really Italian (more on that below!).
This Cake Is a Winner in Every Department:
Flavor: unique, yet still tastes comforting and familiar. Looks: three stately layers crowned with luscious cream cheese frosting; it’s almost as impressive as my cheesecake stuffed chocolate cake!Texture: the coconut and pecans throughout add a satisfying bite to the otherwise soft crumb.Ease: reverse creaming takes a smidge more time, but makes it nearly impossible to damage the crumb of the cake. This recipe is foolproof!
What You Need
Here’s what you’ll need for a super flavorful Italian cream cake:
Almond extract. Using almond extract in both the frosting and cake gives it a bright and enticing flavor without being overwhelming; you’ll almost wonder what it is that’s giving the cake such a perfectly balanced flavor (if you’ve tried my angel food cake, you know what I’m talking about!)!Buttermilk. I love using buttermilk in cakes to add moisture and flavor. If you’re in a pinch, you can use my buttermilk substitute, but I’d really recommend using the real stuff for this one. Pecans. If you’d like to use toasted pecans, toast them before you chop, otherwise they’re likely to burn. Coconut. We’ll use sweetened coconut in the cake and chopped toasted coconut for the decoration. I shared a post yesterday showing how to toast coconut, so check that out if you’ve never done it before. Cream cheese. Use brick-style, full-fat cream cheese; anything else could make your frosting too funny.
SAM’S TIP: I frost my Italian cream cake very generously (thick frosting is sort of a hallmark of the cake, really); if you prefer a more modest amount of frosting and don’t plan to do a decorative border, I suggest you divide the frosting recipe in half. Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Italian Cream Cake
SAM’S TIP: Pretty much the only way to mess up this cake is to overbake it, so make sure to test the cake for doneness a minute or two early to be safe! So, how did I do? If you asked for this recipe, let me know how you like it in the comments below! Enjoy! Let’s bake together! I’ll be walking you through all the steps in my written recipe and video below! If you try this recipe, be sure to tag me on Instagram, and you can also find me on YouTube and Facebook
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