Coconut Cake with Pineapple Filling: The Book Club for Troublesome Women – Recipe Three

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Book club meetings are even more fun when they include a book-based menu. My second recipe, inspired by my novel The Book Club for Troublesome Women, is Coconut Cake with Pineapple Filling. It’s oh-so retro, oh-so-tasty, and oh-so-perfect for your book club meeting!

The Inspiration Behind Margaret’s Book Club Cake

“Perfect” is a word that pops up frequently in the mind of Margaret Ryan, one of the central characters in The Book Club for Troublesome Women.

Margaret is convinced that if she could somehow do enough and be enough, she can somehow manage to make everything perfect – for everyone. It’s a mindset that sets her up to be disappointed again and again. Determined to make the first meeting of her new book club a memorable occasion, she decides to make four different appetizers.

Which seems like enough, right? For most people, it would be, but not Margaret.

At the last minute, she decides to bake a “coconut ambrosia cake” decorated with “coconut, canned pineapple rings, and maraschino cherries,” that she found in a magazine.

I bought real copies of vintage women’s magazines while researching The Book Club for Troublesome Women. I wanted to experience reading them the way my characters would have. It’s impossible to overstate the influence of magazines on our mothers’ and grandmothers’ generation. They were the TikTok and Pinterest of the day, the place women went to keep up with and latch onto the latest trends.

Recipes for these kinds of cakes –really thinly veiled advertisements from companies that sold canned pineapple, shredded coconut, or other products – appeared regularly in 60’s era women’s magazines, so this cake is about as mid-century as it gets.

If your book club has decided to read and discuss The Book Club for Troublesome Women, Margaret’s Coconut Cake with Pineapple Filling would be the “perfect” thing to serve at your meeting.

Not only does it have an authentic, early 60’s vibe that will add a festive touch to your meeting, but it tastes terrific!

Depending on the amount of time and/or baking experience you’ve got, Margaret’s Coconut Cake with Pineapple Filling can be made one of two ways…

Margaret’s Book Club Cake – The Easy Way 

Baking from scratch isn’t everybody’s thing. I totally get it.

Even if that describes you, you can still make a Troublesome Women-inspired cake for your book club meeting. And I guarantee that they’re going to love it.

How are you going to pull it off? By taking a couple of simple shortcuts that nobody will ever need to know about, starting with the cake.

Back in Margaret’s day, boxed cake mixes were pretty awful. But they’ve improved a lot over the years. So, it’s fine to use a mix for your book club cake.

You could use regular vanilla cake mix, then add 1.5 teaspoons of coconut extract to the batter. Or you could buy a coconut-flavored cake mix. Duncan Hines has a new line of “Dolly Parton” cake mixes, and one of the flavors is coconut.

I haven’t tried this one personally, but Duncan Hines mixes are usually pretty good. And, you know…Dolly. Would Dolly ever steer you wrong? I don’t think so.

Once you’ve got the cake part dealt with, you can go one of two ways.

Option one: make your own frosting and filling according to the recipe below. If you’ve got time, I recommend doing so. Homemade frosting and filling will taste better.

Option two: buy canned pineapple filling and vanilla frosting from the store (add a little coconut extract to the frosting), and decorate the cake according to the instructions below. It will still taste very good.

The most important thing here is the decoration. That’s the thing that’ll give your cake that fun, retro, ripped from the pages of a 60’s women’s magazine look.

Margaret’s Book Club Cake – The (Somewhat) Hard Way

In spite of the above heading, recreating Margaret’s Coconut Cake with Pineapple Filling really isn’t that difficult.

If you’ve baked cakes before, the process will be familiar. So, if you’re up for baking a dessert from scratch, don’t hesitate to give it a try.

The recipe instructions are very thorough, so I’m not going to go into much detail here. Just read them through once or twice before you begin, and you should have no problem.

But I will give you a couple of tips…

Make sure you leave enough time to allow everything to cool completely before you decorate the cake. If the cake is even a little warm, the frosting and filling will melt.

Likewise, it’s very important to let the pineapple filling cool completely in the refrigerator after you make it. The filling will thicken considerably as it cools. If you put it while it’s even partly warm, it’s just going to slide off or squeeze out the sides when you put on the top layer of cake.

When you add the cornstarch to the pineapple filling recipe, make sure it doesn’t have any lumps. If you can, it’s best to sift it into the filling.

A final tip – dab the cherries with a paper towel before you put them on the cake. That will prevent the cherry juice from leaving red splashes on the white coconut or frosting.

Make Coconut Cake with Pineapple Filling For Your Troublesome Women!

Creating recipes for book clubs to enjoy during their discussions of The Book Club for Troublesome Women has been a lot of fun for me.  I hope they’ll be fun for all of you as well.

Whether you make your cake the “easy” or the (somewhat) “hard” way, you and the Troublesome Women in your book club are in for a treat!

Coconut Cake with Pineapple Filling: The Book Club for Troublesome Women – Recipe Two

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• Author: Marie Bostwick
• Yield: 8-12 servings 1x

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Ingredients

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FOR THE CAKE

• 2.5 cup cake flour
• 1 T baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ cup unsalted butter, slightly softened
• 1.5 cups sugar
• 5 T vegetable oil
• 1 ¼ cup whole milk
• 1.5 tsp coconut extract
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 eggs

FOR THE PINEAPPLE FILLING

• 20 oz can crushed pineapple
• ½ cup sugar
• 3 T cornstarch

FOR THE COCONUT CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

• 1 cup unsalted butter, slightly softened
• 4.5 cup powdered sugar
• 12 oz cream cheese, softened (remove from refrigerator about 30 minutes before using)
• 1.5 tsp coconut extract
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

FOR THE DECORATIONS:

• 1 cup shredded sweetened coconut
• 1 15 oz can pineapple rings, drained
• Maraschino cherries, drained

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Instructions

FOR THE CAKE

1. Preheat oven to 350. Oil and flour two 8-inch, round baking pans.
2. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl. Set aside.
3. Cream butter and sugar together, using a hand or stand mixer. Add vegetable oil, milk, and extracts, blending until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add eggs, adding one at a time, mixing until batter is light and fluffy.
4. Divide cake batter evenly to the two prepared pans. Bake for 45 minutes, or until cake it baked through and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
5. Remove pans from oven. Allow cakes to cool completely before removing from pans.

FOR THE PINEAPPLE FILLING

1. Stirring sugar and pineapple together in a cooking pot on the stove. Sprinkle or sift cornstarch onto mixture, stirring to combine.
2. Turn the burner onto medium high and bring the filling to a boil, stirring frequently. Lower heat. Simmer filling for 5-7 minutes, stirring constantly, until filling thickens.
3. Place cooked filling in the refrigerator, allowing it to cool completely before using. Filling will become thicker as it cools.

FOR THE COCONUT CREAM CHEESE FROSTING

1. Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, blend together softened butter and one cup of the powdered sugar. Blend in the rest of the sugar in batches, adding about a cup at a time.
2. Add softened cream cheese and extracts to the sugar/butter mixture, blending until smooth and fluffy. Store frosting in the refrigerator until ready to use.

FOR THE DECORATIONS:

1. Place first layer of cooled cake on a platter. Spread completely cooled pineapple filling on top of the cake. Place second layer of cake on top of the first layer.
2. Spread frosting on top of and around the sides of the cake, covering it completely with a thick, even layer of frosting.
3. Using clean hands, gently press handfuls of shredded coconut into the frosting around the sides of the cake. Decorate the top of the cake with pineapple rings, placing cherries in the center of each ring and in open areas, as shown in the photograph.