Cake - great! Topping - too sugary

Lazy Daisy Cake
Taste of Home The Complete Guide To Country Cooking Copyright 1998

2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1/2 cup milk

Frosting:
1 cup shredded coconut
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, melted
2 tablespoons half-and-half cream

In a mixing bowl, beat eggs, sugar and vanilla on high until thick and lemon-colored, about 4 minutes. Combine flour, baking powder and salt; add to egg mixture. Beat on low just until combined. Heat milk and butter in small saucepan until butter is melted. Add to batter; beat thoroughly (batter will be thin). Pour into a greased 9-inch square baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool slightly. Combine frosting ingredients; spread over warm cake. Broil about 4 in. from heat for 3-4 minutes or until the top is lightly browned. (Keep an eye on it!) Cool in pan on a wire rack.

Yield: 9 servings
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I had planned on making an Easy Cream Puff Cake for my parent's Labor Day cookout but that would have meant a trip to the grocery store. I had everything I needed to make this Lazy Daisy Cake, including the coconut that had an expiration date of late September so I was happy to find a use for it.

This was my first attempt at a broiled frosting. I don't think anything went wrong but I didn't really care for the topping. The flavor was good, it was just too much brown sugar - it was like putting a spoonful of sugar in your mouth and chewing on it. I think I would try this with less brown sugar if I ever felt inclined to make it again. The cake underneath the topping was fantastic however. The recipe lead-in emphasized the light and airy texture of this cake and so it was.

The base cake would be great to make a Tandy Takes knock-off (or Kandy Kakes for the younger generation). Tandy Takes (now known as Kandy Kakes), are a product from Tastykakes Bakery that I grew up eating. They're little round pieces of cake with peanut butter spread over top and enrobed in chocolate. Knock-off recipes typically just make bars of cake topped with peanut butter and then chocolate. If we weren't a peanut-free household, I would use this cake recipe for Tandy Takes.

This is from one of my newest cookbooks. I can't believe Taste of Home had cookbooks out there and I didn't know about them before now. I love Taste of Home magazine. I love that the recipes are from real people and not from a test kitchen (or sometimes, in some magazines, I think the recipes strictly came out of someone's imagination and have never actually been prepared). I love the pictures. But I resist buying it because it's too hard to find recipes in magazines, once it's filed onto my bookshelf. It's much easier to pull out a book that's been organized well. I should have realized they would have cookbooks out there, I just never looked for them. All of the cooking magazines seem to put out annuals and other cookbooks. I haven't purchased any of the Taste of Home annuals yet but I'm thinking about it.

Question of the Day: When did you last eat cake? What kind of cake was it?