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Cococnut Cake | www.somethingswanky.com

Coconut Cake Recipe

My favorite doctored up cake mix combined with my favorite from-scratch coconut buttercream. I love that this cake is both beautiful and simple.

Cococnut Cake | somethingswanky.com

Originally posted in May 2014.

I thought it would be fun to celebrate this Mother’s day by spending this whole week posting the favorite dessert recipes of all of the mothers in my life! Starting with my Grandma.

I’ve posted some of her recipes on here before. Check out this Red Velvet Cake and these Monster Cookies. Those are hers and two of my very favorite recipes.

Cococnut Cake | somethingswanky.com

My Grandma is one of my heroes– both in the kitchen and out. She is genuine and kind and has always been such a great support to me. I am so thankful to have her in my life, and to really have her. She’s always taken a real interest in the things that are important to me and has been so encouraging of my pursuits.

She has been such an important and permanent influence in my life…. as have her baked goods. So many of my memories of time with my Grandma revolve around holiday baking. I loved (and I still do) sitting at her counter, watching her work, and just talking.

Whilst eating Monster Cookies of course 😉

Cococnut Cake | somethingswanky.com

Grandma says she likes coconut cake best, so here we are today with a super easy and yummy coconut cake. Perfect for summer! It’s simply my favorite doctored up cake mix (seriously, you can’t beat this recipe), and my favorite coconut buttercream. I love the layers on this cake too– just like the rest of it, they’re both beautiful and simple.

Plus, my grandma is the queen of layered cakes. If she were making this, it would have at least 6 layers. Maybe I’ll get there one day, but for now I’m settling for a measly four layers ;).

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It's super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake Recipe

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It’s super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It's super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

You guys want to hear something CRAZY?

I first published this recipe 6 years ago to the day! As you know, I’ve been updating recipes and photos for quite some time (I’ve been moving like a turtle on this project). I actually baked and shot this cake last week, and when I sat down at the computer tonight to write the post, I totally geeked out when I saw “Published: April 21, 2011.”

I’m sure I’m the only one getting excited over this, but it felt serendipitous and I just had to share ????.

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It's super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

SIX YEARS! I still can’t believe it’s been that long since I posted this recipe– or since I started blogging, for that matter. I’m not really one of those bloggers that has an exact date for my first post and celebrates a blog birthday or anything. I mean, I totally would if I could! But I think I deleted and re-published my first post about 14 million times, so I had totally lost any concept of my “start date” by the time I realized celebrating your “blogiversary” was a thing.

So basically, I just have a vague recollection of some of my very first posts, and I know for sure this was one of them! Which makes it extra special to me.

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It's super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

This batter is THICK. And all kinds of amazing.

Thanks to two large eggs and 2/3 cup of sour cream, it’s an incredibly rich and moist cake as long as you don’t overbake it. What’s overbaking it look like? A totally clean toothpick is overbaked. That’s not to say you want a ton of batter sticking to the toothpick when you test it, but if a little bit of moist cake is still sticking to it– you know it’s perfect.

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It's super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

You could go a couple of different routes with the frosting. Chocolate ganache is a solid option, obviously. And my all-time favorite Chocolate Frosting is another great way to go. And this glaze is quick and easy and would look stunning!

The day that I made this cake for photographing, my brain was stuck on a one-minute fudge frosting I had seen on Pinterest. So that’s what I did and that’s the recipe I’m including for you today. But seriously, the sky is the limit with the frosting, so don’t feel limited to what I did here!

Not that I want to scare you away from this one-minute frosting. It was pretty awesome, and I’m glad I tried it! It turns into an almost fudge-like state when it cools and firms up quite a bit. Yum!

This old fashioned chocolate cake was one of the first from-scratch cakes I ever made. It's super moist and has a rich chocolate flavor. Top it with chocolate ganache or this yummy 1-minute frosting!

???? And trust me, you’ll definitely want a glass of milk to go with this recipe. Enjoy!

These moist banana bread donuts are baked to perfection, dipped in chocolate, and smothered with coconut and caramel. The banana bread reincarnation of Samoas.

Samoas Banana Bread Donuts Recipe

These moist banana bread donuts are baked to perfection, dipped in chocolate, and smothered with coconut and caramel. The banana bread reincarnation of Samoas.

These moist banana bread donuts are baked to perfection, dipped in chocolate, and smothered with coconut and caramel. The banana bread reincarnation of Samoas.

I adore banana bread.

Seriously. If I were to write another cookbook and it was a one-food-themed topic, it would most certainly be banana bread.

Maybe it’s because of my mom’s banana bread recipe. It’s comforting and nostalgic and one of the cornerstone recipes in my baking repertoire. Or maybe it’s because I always over-buy bananas, and we have at least 4 overripe bananas every week for banana bread baking.

Or maybe it’s just because nothing in the world beats homemade banana bread. Period.

🍌🍌🍌 CHECK OUT more of our favorite Banana Bread Recipes 🍌🍌🍌

These moist banana bread donuts are baked to perfection, dipped in chocolate, and smothered with coconut and caramel. The banana bread reincarnation of Samoas.

No matter the reason, my love for banana bread knows no bounds, and I love to eat it in any shape or form.

Particularly in this Samoas Banana Bread Donuts form. Donuts are never, ever wrong. Am I right? Or am I right?!

https://www.somethingswanky.com/banana-bread-donuts/

As you can see, these aren’t just any banana bread donuts. These are anything but ordinary.

Unless your definition of ordinary includes being dipped in chocolate, smothered in coconut and caramel, and drizzled with more chocolate on top? Because in that case, yes. These Samoas Banana Bread Donuts would be very ordinary ????.

Enjoy!

Melt in Your Mouth Buttermilk Pancakes and Homemade Buttermilk Syrup from Something Swanky

Melt in Your Mouth Buttermilk Pancakes + Buttermilk Syrup Recipe

You will fall in love with these fluffy buttermilk pancakes with a homemade buttermilk syrup. They make the perfect weekend breakfast!

Melt in Your Mouth Buttermilk Pancakes and Homemade Buttermilk Syrup from Something Swanky

Oh you guys, have I got a post for you today!!

A lot of cookbooks come across my desk– er… my kitchen table ????– over the course of a year. And I like them every one. I love collecting cookbooks, especially cookbooks from my friends.

But I have to tell you, there is something special about the one I’m sharing with you today.

My sweet friends Carrian and Cade Cheney (the husband-and-wife blogger duo at Oh Sweet Basil) just released their very first, very beautiful, mouth-watering cookbook: Our Sweet Basil Kitchen.

And this book is no ordinary cookbook. It is absolutely slam-packed with recipes that you will fall in love with. Every single recipe is a home run with gorgeous photography and a list of ingredients you probably already have on hand.

Each and every recipe was something I could imagine feeding my family on a regular basis. Dinners like Chicken Pot Pie Soup with Buttermilk pie or Biscuits, Smoky Sloppy Joes, and Fiesta Chicken and Rice could easily become regulars at our house.

And don’t even get me started on the desserts. I mean, Churro-Style Bread Pudding?! Come to mama!

I think what I love most about this cookbook is the combination of good, solid classics alongside recipes that venture outside the box. For example…

Caramel Brownies, Carolina Pulled Pork with Sauce, Double Chocolate Banana Muffins?

Classic.

Deep Fried Peaches, Chicken Cordon Bleu Lasagna, and Sweet Potato Apple Turkey Chili?

Outside the box, my friends. And totally amazing.

Despite all the amazingness in this cookbook, it only took flipping through 5 pages to know exactly which recipe I wanted to share with you from Cade and Carrian’s new cookbook.

Because if there’s one recipe that says Oh Sweet Basil to me, it’s these Melt in Your Mouth Buttermilk Pancakes with Buttermilk Syrup.

I’m obsessed.

Melt in Your Mouth Buttermilk Pancakes and Homemade Buttermilk Syrup from Something Swanky

And that homemade buttermilk syrup? Ohemgee. Hold me. ????

And then make these pancakes. Pronto!

The best EVER banana bread on Something Swanky

The BEST Banana Bread Ever. Recipe

The best banana bread recipe makes an extra moist and extra delicious loaf thanks to four whole bananas per loaf, brown sugar, and butter. The best EVER banana bread on Something Swanky Ok, you guys. I have to confess something. I could have sworn I had already published this recipe. Like…. truly. I’m not totally confident here that I didn’t post this just last week. I mean, I looked. But I’m kind of losing my mind these days, and I’m afraid I just sort of missed it. So here’s the deal. If this is a repeat, can we all just agree to let it go? Look the other way and just pretend I didn’t already write this post? I mean, I’m hoping I didn’t. But seriously, no promises. Thanks gang.

🍌🍌🍌 CELEBRATE BANANAS with us: our favorite Banana Recipes 🍌🍌🍌

The best EVER banana bread on Something Swanky

Facebook Woes

Oh! That reminds me– speaking of losing my mind… My Facebook page was majorly hacked today. And I am SO SORRY! They have been posting the most horrible spammy posts, and I’m so horrified that my wonderful readers are seeing this stuff pop up in their feed with my name attached to it ????. I spent all day chasing down Facebook humans (they don’t really exist, by the way), trying to delete the nasty posts for as long as I had access to the page, and asking people to report the page as hacked. It feels like digging a tunnel with a spoon… or however that saying goes. You know what I mean. Basically… it stinks. It’s been a crazy long day and nothing actually got fixed where Facebook is concerned. So there’s that. Fingers crossed we get things all sorted out by tomorrow ????????. The best EVER banana bread on Something Swanky

About That Banana Bread…

Moving on. You know what makes all the stupid Facebook hacker stuff go away? This banana bread. Seriously. I’m making a batch tonight, because it’s the best food I could think of to adequately fill the void of a destroyed Facebook page that took 6 painstaking years of my life to fill with 200K followers and a gajillion dessert recipes. Banana bread is the only thing that can help me at this point. The best EVER banana bread on Something Swanky And not just any banana bread. No, my friends. This is magic banana bread. THE BEST banana bread in the whole entire world ever. That’s right. I said it. It’s THE BEST. Never, in all my years of banana bread eating, did I know that a piece of banana bread could actually melt in your mouth. Did you know that?! It can! THIS banana bread can. It has a moist, tender crumb that pairs with the crunch of walnuts in the most beautiful contrast of textures to have ever happened in a bread. In fact, I declare this bread to be so perfect that it doesn’t even need chocolate! It is that good, folks. If you’ve been searching for the perfect banana bread recipe– this is it folks. It doesn’t get better than this!
An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

Tagalong Pound Cake Recipe

 An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

There are three very important things happening in this uberly (it’s a word. shut up.) delicious cake.

☝????Pound cake. Easy, Sara Lee, ALWAYS GOOD and always easy ???? pound cake.

✌???? Peanut butter. And I don’t mean peanut butter that’s been diluted with sugar or whipped cream or something. I mean PEANUT BUTTER. In all of it’s creamy glory. The way the Girl Scouts intended it to be.

✌????☝???? (why isn’t there an emjoi for three??) Chocolate. Duh.

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

Step number one: buy a Sara Lee pound cake out of the frozen section. I’m not even going to bother arguing with the make-it-from-scratch crowd here. Trust me. It’s just as good if not better than a homemade pound cake for this particular recipe.

I rest my case.

Step number two: smother it in creamy, creamy peanut butter.

Step number three: Freeze it. Really about 30 minutes ought to do the trick. We just don’t want it to melt when we pour the chocolate over it.

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

Are you ready for this step?

Canned frosting. Mmm-hm. I’m not even embarrassed. Homemade frosting has it’s place. Like on this cake. But half a can of melted Pillsbury Milk Chocolate frosting works like a dream for this recipe.

Plus… mama likey easy.

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

So, to sum up:

Cake. Peanut butter. Chocolate frosting.

Crazy stupid easy.

Crazy stupid good.

Yep, I think that about covers everything.

An unbelievably easy and delicious cake that tastes like your favorite peanut butter and chocolate Girl Scout Tagalong Cookies. Only three ingredients!

Enjoy my dears!

Indulgent chocolate muffins with a secret ingredient that makes them extra soft, extra fudgy, and extra chocolate-y!

Triple Chocolate Muffins Recipe

Indulgent chocolate muffins with a secret ingredient that makes them extra soft, extra fudgy, and extra chocolate-y!

Indulgent chocolate muffins with a secret ingredient that makes them extra soft, extra fudgy, and extra chocolate-y!

I thought we might all be in the mood for a healthier recipe to balance out all the chocolate chip cookies, Samoas Fudge, and Snickerdoodle Pie we’ve been eating around here lately.

Just kidding. What I meant to say was that I thought we might all be in the mood for muffins that taste like brownies, because who needs to balance out dessert?! More like, let’s make dessert for breakfast! ????

Which is exactly what I did.

Indulgent chocolate muffins with a secret ingredient that makes them extra soft, extra fudgy, and extra chocolate-y!

These muffins are full of whole wheat goodness, healthy fat in the form of coconut oil, and a shot of Greek yogurt for an extra soft and moist center. So you see? Despite their chocolate-y goodness, these muffins really are more substantial than super fudgy cupcakes sans frosting.

I mean. They taste like cupcakes. Or brownies. But they aren’t.

Because these are for breakfast. ????

Indulgent chocolate muffins with a secret ingredient that makes them extra soft, extra fudgy, and extra chocolate-y!

So, besides that Greek yogurt, these muffins are packing a secret ingredient that makes them unbelievably soft and moist– almost cake like, really.

You know how pudding mix makes cookies and cakes super soft and tender? Well, of course, it does the same thing to muffins! Adding a box of chocolate pudding mix (I like Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate pudding mix, but you can use any chocolate mix) takes these muffins to a whole new level of indulgence.

And did I mention they taste like dessert? For breakfast?! ????

Enjoy!

These cookies have been my favorite by a landslide!

Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

Crispy, chewy, butter, chocolate chip cookie perfection.

These cookies have been my favorite by a landslide!

The chocolate chip cookie. My favorite dessert on the planet. No, really. It is. I know I claim a lot of bests and ultimates and, yes, even favorites. But in truth, nothing will ever beat out a chocolate chip cookie for me.

Especially the RIGHT kind of chocolate chip cookie.

Now, I don’t discriminate, mind you. I like them all. From Chips Ahoy to bakery cookies to my own homemade batches– I love chocolate chips cookies.

But the right chocolate chip cookie? It’s like winning the cookie jackpot. And it’s different for everyone. Maybe your kind of chocolate chip cookie is soft and pillowy. Or maybe you like them crunchy. Maybe you like big chunks of melty chocolate oozing out the sides. Or maybe you like lots of mini chocolate chips in every single bit. Maybe you need a salty, buttery flavor. Or possibly you care more about subtle vanilla undertones.

We’ve all got our priorities when it comes to chocolate chip cookies.

For me? I need thick, crispy edges. I like the center to still be just a little bit underdone. And I really prefer cookies a little bit on the thinner side. Not like crunchy thin or barely-there-thin, it’s just I feel like thick cookies almost always get a little tough once they’ve sat a day or two– and I really don’t like that. The thinner cookies stay chewy, because they have a lower flour to fat/sugar ratio.

That buttery/salty flavor is a MUST. In fact, the saltier the better for me when it comes to CCC!

And I can really go just about any way with chocolate (chips, mini chips, shavings, chunks, etc…) as long as it’s semi-sweet. I went through a brief love affair with milk chocolate chips, but I keep coming back to semi-sweet. Always. ????

These cookies have been my favorite by a landslide!

These cookies have it all. At least for me, anyway. And I am completely smitten. ????

Those crispy, butter edges– be still my heart!

The flavor is spot on, the texture is fabulously chewy and perfectly underbaked in the center, and every bite is full of miniature chocolate chips. Seriously, these are the BEST chocolate chip cookies I’ve made in the chocolate chip cookie experiment.

If you like that buttery-crispy-chewy-underbaked-perfection sort of thing, that is. If you’re more of a thick and soft cookie person, check out these. They’re fabulous too.

These cookies have been my favorite by a landslide!

This recipe hails from a really fabulous BuzzFeed article all about the ultimate chocolate chip cookies. If you haven’t seen it, be sure to check it out. It’s a great read (if, ahem, you know, you like to read about chocolate chip cookies… and some of us do)!

And if you don’t want to read about them, that’s fine too. But seriously, make these cookies!

Enjoy ✌????❤️???? 🙂