Coconut rum cake

I've been delayed on posting this due to all the seasonal baking I had done for myself and others.

My friend Owen had his birthday in early December, so I thought proper to make him a cake to celebrate.

A few weeks beforehand, I asked him what he would want:

I got quite the interesting answer, although, not anything out of what I would have expected from a rum lover:

Needless to say, I was going to make something very rum-filled.

I really wanted to make a coconut rum cake, but wasn't sure the chocolate would fit in nicely. I opted out of the chocolate, since I had made things with chocolate the weekend before.

I'll admit that I cheated a bit on this cake. I used a box white cake mix as the base, because it was easier than trying to change my white cake recipe to be as coconut-y as I wanted it to be.

The cake has 4 parts to it: the cake, the rum sauce, the coconut glaze, and the toasted coconut topping. It went over quite well too. 

Coconut Rum Cake

cake and topping
1 white cake mix
1/2 cup butter, cubed
1 can coconut milk, reserve remaining for the glaze
3 eggs
2 cup shredded coconut, 1 cup for cake, 1 cup for topping 

syrup
1/4 cup dark rum
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water 

glaze
2 tbsp butter
2 cups powdered sugar
reserve coconut milk 

1. Process 1 cup shredded coconut, and cake mix until finely chopped. Cut in butter until cornmeal textured. Then add the coconut milk and eggs.
2. Bake as directed and let cake cool on a wire rack and poke holes with a fork across the top of the cake.
3. Toast the remaining 1 cup shredded coconut in a 350F oven.
4. While the cake is cooling, bring the syrup ingredients to a boil. Let cool slightly before drizzling syrup over the cake. Let syrup soak for 15-30 minutes.
5. Whisk the butter, powdered sugar, and coconut milk together until runny and smooth.
6. Drizzle over the syrup soaked cake.
7. Top with the toasted coconut.