Lindsey Nair

Features staff writer Lindsey writes about food, restaurants and recipes.

Recent columns

• Be the hostess with the mostest at your next cocktail party (on a limited budget)
• Be sharp about knives
• What restaurant staffers shouldn't do
• Good gourds: How to make your own pumpkin pie filling

Recipes

• Tomato Basil Mozzarella Bites
• Szechwan Cold Garlic Shrimp

• Recipe archive

1 stick margarine

1/2 cup Crisco

2 cups sugar

2 cups flour

1 cup coconut milk

1 tsp. vanilla

5 egg whites, stiffly beaten

5 egg yolks

1 tsp. baking soda

4 ounces sweetened coconut

1/4 cup key lime juice

Zest of 1 lemon

1 tsp. minced fresh ginger (or more, to taste)

Beat egg whites in a medium-sized bowl and set aside, reserving yolks. Into a large bowl: beat margarine, Crisco and sugar. Add egg yolks and beat. Add flour and soda alternately with coconut milk, beating. Stir in vanilla, lime juice, ginger. Fold in coconut and egg whites with spoon.

Grease and flour three cake pans. Add waxed paper cut to fit. Pour in equal amounts of batter and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. To flatten humpy layers: When out of oven a few minutes, lay towel across pan and press. (Flat layers stack better for icing.) Cool completely before icing.

For icing to layer and cover all three layers: 1 stick margarine, 8 ounces cream cheese, 1 box confectioner’s sugar, 1 tsp. vanilla. (I substituted lemon curd from a jar for between the layers and then cut back the amount of cream-cheese icing for the exterior.)

Optional topping: In toaster oven at 300 degrees, roast 1 cup chopped pecans, 1/3 cup shredded coconut, 1 tsp. lemon zest, 2 Tbsp. butter and 1/4 cup brown sugar, stirring often until slightly brown and sticky. Let cool and sprinkle on top of cake.

(For Italian cream cake purists, who I'm sure are nice people, too: Do all the above, but substitute buttermilk for the coconut milk and leave out key lime juice, lemon zest, ginger, lemon curd and the crazy-gooey cake topping.)