Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Vanilla Wafer Cake

I’ve been meaning to write about this interesting and different cake that tastes surprisingly great!

DSCF3891These little cakes (I made 8 smaller cakes in ramekins using half the recipe rather than a whole cake) may not be the prettiest things, but they taste great!  Guess who ate most of them at our house?  Kevin—Mr. Cake Hater himself.  But I’ll note that it’s really frosting he dislikes so much and this cake doesn’t have frosting and doesn’t need it.  Though after being sent the recipe from Lisa (Check out her blog, she's an amazing artist), she told me her husband had the cake at an out of town dinner and raved about it and told her how much he LOVED it (he even asked the people he was having dinner with for the recipe), I decided I needed to try it.  He was given a copy of an old hand written recipe that didn’t have much instruction.  So Lisa and I worked on our version from our two ends of the country and shared our results. 

This cake really is good by itself, but would be great with a  big dollop of whipped cream or maybe some ice cream. 

DSCF3890Here’s the recipe as it was written on the copy Lisa received.

Vanilla Wafer Cake (Gary Ryan) adapted by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

1 cup butter

2 cups granulated sugar

6 large eggs, beaten

7 to 10 ounces coconut

1—12 ounces box Nilla Wafers, crushed

1/2 cup milk

1 cup pecans, chopped

1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream butter and add sugar.  Add remaining ingredients.  Mix well and pour into greased pan (bundt).  Bake at 325 degrees 1 to 1 1/2 hours.  Cool in pan for 2 hours. 

I halved the recipe, but made it as written.  Lisa and I read elsewhere (though there wasn’t too much about the cake elsewhere online, or the few others we found were enough different that we stuck with this one) not to sub any other cookies.  But I know she used Trader Joe’s wafer cookies that are whole wheat.  Lisa also played around with less sugar and using ground flax in place of the eggs.  I made the half recipe in six 6 ounce ramekins and two 4 ounce heart shaped ramekins.  The smaller cakes baked for 39 minutes.  I toasted the pecans and used 8 ounces sweetened shredded coconut.  I also used I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter instead of butter.  I ground the cookies (6 ounces) in the food processor.

At the time I made these, I was really watching what I ate, so I really only took a bite of one of these.  The cake almost tastes tropical (if there was pineapple in it it would).  This cake is unique in that there is no added extra flour, just the crushed cookies as well as no added leaveners.  I really enjoy trying new/different recipes, so this was a fun one.  Lisa and I both agreed that somehow incorporating chocolate in these would be good (we’re a lot alike when it comes to chocolate).  ;)  Thanks for sharing, Lisa!

DSCF3888

7 comments:

Plain Chicken said...

Looks great. I will be trying this in the near future.

Lisa said...

Mmm, chocolate would definitely be a good addition to that. I heard about this cake before and judging from your delicious review, I'd say I'll have to try it one day.

Lisa Ernst said...

I see you posted the Vanilla Wafer Cake experiment. I thought this was a very tasty recipe, especially once I added some chocolate chips, which went great with the coconut and pecans. Of course, my husband loves it plain.

Nutmeg Nanny said...

I think these little cakes look great! I love the idea of using crushed Nilla wafers.

Natalie said...

I've never used vanilla wafers in anything but banana pudding...this is so interesting, I'll have to remember it!

Unknown said...

This seems super interesting. And of course, it'd be awesome with some chocolate!!

beehicks said...

just have to try this