My children are now mostly grown, and so I have made a lot of birthday cakes in the last 25 years. Despite this I am very often unhappy with my efforts in fancy cake decorating. I have too often decorated under pressure in the final hours before a party, and done a few outright cake disasters, and many substandard cakes. This is especially true when I promised a cake with ambitious these design. I am an artistic person, but frosting is just not my best medium.

So I always told myself I would never do a wedding cake, even a smaller simple one. I would not want to be trying to manage cake-decorating frosting tips with shaky hands on the day of a wedding. But I recently tried a decorating idea that I feel confident would work beautifully and easily for a wedding cake. The solution is a “coconut cake.”

A coconut cake is a yellow cake with a smidge of coconut extract flavoring. This is frosted with white frosting, making it fairly smooth. Then, here’s the easy part: pat coconut into the frosting all over, until there is literally no places left to stick more coconut. When you reach this stage, there is nothing sticky left on the surface, and so it is very easy to mold. You can gently pat the frosting into a perfect shape. It’s extremely forgiving.

When I made my first coconut cake, I was impressed by how elegant this frosting surface is. I can see this as a tiered wedding cake, especially if other elements are added. I have seen cakes that have nonedible elements, such as curled ribbon, or flowers, and other cakes with edible gold or white elements.

If you’re doing a coconut cake and you want the frosting very white, do not use butter or regular vanilla, which give it a pale yellow color. Use all shortening. The coconut will give the frosting ample flavor.

Photo credit: kimberlykv