Ambrosia Cake

This light, fruity, coconutty Ambrosia layer cake is perfect for Spring!! White cake layers are filled with a lightly sweet whipped filling full of citrus and coconut.

So, today I am going to tell you about the Most Embarrassing Blog Thing.

I’ve been keeping it from you for awhile. It’s awful, truly.

It’s about my Most Popular Recipe.

Want to know what it is? The recipe that gets the most views, the most pins, ALL THE LOVE??

It’s this recipe for Coconut Refrigerator Cake.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a wonderful cake. I make it often and it’s truly a family favorite.

But, I mean…

Food bloggers like to think that our photography and writing matters. That way, when our blog gets more readers, we can pat ourselves on the back and be all, “Yes, this is because of my superb writing and photography skills, thank you sirs”. But then ugly truths like this exist, that sometimes photos and writing are awful, not even appetizing or funny really, and people don’t care.

Do you want to hear the story of how I found out that this God forsaken cake was one of my most popular of all times?

I’m so glad you asked!

A few years ago, I went to a BlogHer Food conference and was invited to a party for Ziplist, the company that is responsible for the handy recipe box and printing features on my recipes. Keep in mind I was pregnant, it was Summer, and I’d been traveling all day when I arrived at said party.

Maybe not a recipe for success?

When I arrived at the party, we found out that the nice people at Ziplist had printed out the MOST SAVED recipe for each blogger and placed it in various places around the room. Curious, I began scanning the room, excited to see which of my creations my readers loved so much.

And…this photo stared back at me. I wanted to DIE.

Here I am at a party with my peers, some truly talented and super fabulous bloggers….and this photo is plastered all over town with my name on it.

Then I died. Actually, I didn’t die, I just found a hole to hide my sweaty pregnant self in and didn’t come out until I was hungry. So….fiveish minutes.

I keep telling myself I’ll go back and re-do photos and write a better post, but I still haven’t done it. I’d like to say that’s because it reminds me of how far I’ve come, that I want my readers to be able to look through my old photos and see that it’s a process, that we all start somewhere, that no one starts off the BEST AT THINGS, but really…it’s because I am lazy.

Since I’m too lazy to go back and re-do that recipe, I thought I’d create something similar that I think you’ll LOVE.

This cake might officially be my favorite cake of all time. Not even kidding a tiny bit.

I used the same type filling as my Coconut Refrigerator Cake, which is a combination of Cool Whip and Sour Cream (yes I know some of you think Cool Whip is from the Devil, no you may not use freshly whipped cream, not this time).

Because the filling in the coconut cake tends to want to run off the cake, I used less sour cream, making it thicker. I added a bit of powdered sugar, and in addition to coconut, I threw in some mandarin orange slices and crushed pineapple.

If you’ve had Ambrosia Salad before, this is pretty identical, minus the marshmallows, which I chose to top the cake with instead of mixing in the filling.

I opted for a white cake mix here. We are using Cool Whip, so I didn’t see any point in making things difficult so we could call it “from scratch”. Regardless, this cake is AMAZING. Light, refreshing, perfectly sweet and PERFECT for Spring dinners, Easter, or Mother’s Day.

Let the cake sit overnight and the layers will soak up some of the moisture from the filling. SO GOOD!!

If you want to use an additional tub of Cool Whip to frost the outside of the cake, you are welcome to. I liked the exposed layers because you could see the colors of the fruit in the filling.

This is truly a special cake. I hope you love it as much as I do!!

I could have eaten the whole thing. I almost did. Can we just make swimsuit season not be a thing anymore? Sigh.

Print Ambrosia Cake

Ingredients

1 box white cake mix, plus eggs, oil and water needed to prepare
8 oz Cool Whip, thawed
1/2 cup sour cream
2/3 cup powdered sugar
8 oz can crushed pineapple, well drained
15 oz can mandarin orange slices, drained
2 cups sweetened, shredded coconut
2 cups mini marshmallows (I used the fruit flavored pastel ones)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350. Butter and flour two 8 inch round cake pans and set aside.
Prepare cake batter as directed on box. Pour evenly into prepared pans and bake until tops are browned and spring back when lightly touched in the center. Remove cakes and let cool in pans for 5 minutes, then remove and allow cakes to finish cooling completely on wire rack.
Once cakes are cooled, prepare filling: In a large bowl, combine Cool Whip, sour cream, and powdered sugar. Fold in oranges, pineapple and coconut until combined.
Split cakes horizontally. Fill each layer generously with ambrosia filling and top with the next cake, cut side down. For best results, let cake chill overnight before serving. Top with marshmallows before serving.

Schema/Recipe SEO Data Markup by ZipList Recipe Plugin 2.2

You are seriously going to LOVE this cake!! Enjoy!

The post Ambrosia Cake appeared first on Confessions of a Cookbook Queen.