Hmm... sounds like a pretty wishy-washy opinion on the cake.

Oh, Swiss meringue is yummy.

It's stickier and more goo-ilicious than regular, whip by hand meringue.

Since you're all sick of cake and stuff, I could volunteer to take it off your hands. (See icon for evidence of my ability to eat cake.) :D

Alton's coconut cake? Oh dear. I have a feeling I'll be making this for my husband soon!!

My first husband was a coconut cake fan, but I still like it anyway. Is there someplace I could find that recipe? Also, I note that somebody above calls it Swiss meringue, but I know it as Italian meringue and it's seriously good stuff. And not really all that difficult to do though it *sounds* intimidating.

All of which reminds me. We should talk about what you'd like to eat while you're here. What? Isn't that the first thing that comes to everyone's mind when they travel? And anything special you'd like to have for your Clarion West party. I always ask the instructor that when I'm having the party -- I failed to supply Gordon Van Gelder's request for palm rats, but have been successful other than that.

MKK

Omg this sounds heavenly.

I wish I had an oven... *drools*

A version of that cake is one of the traditional Christmas holiday cakes in my fahter's family, along with jam cake with burnt sugar icing. (The left-over coconut went into ambrosia, a southern dish that's really hard to explain to people who do not think of oranges as a strictly seasonal fruit, and of coconut as a rare exotic delicacy.) My-aunt-who-owns-power-tools says the first time she was able to use her electric drill and saw on the coconut was the moment she considered making it more than once a year. She won't make it in the dead of summer, though, as she feels the boiled frosting is not a good thing to try in hot, humid weather, even with air conditioning. The jam cake and burnt sugar icing are liable to appear in other seasons. Because why not, really?

I made Italian meringue frosting once for a wedding cake for a wedding in JULY. The only thing I can say about that is Thank The Gods For Air Conditioning.

Pretty much. First the making--let's stand over a hot stove for 7 minutes or so, grasping either a hand-cranked egg-beater (exhausting) or an electric mixer (producing still more heat)--then the eating--concentrated sugar and egg white FTKill. Then there's the fact that at certain levels of humidity, all the cream of tartar in the world ain't gonna give you rhose soft peaks. (At certain levels, cream of tartar gives your meringue a lemony taste. I speak from experience.)

Strictly speaking, the jam cake, even uniced, is a cooler wetaher cake, but since it's so much less trouble, it's good all fall and winter, and even in early spring.

All the recipes for jam cake I know of make a prety heavy cake, even without nuts and raisins added, and they are all spice cakes. If one does not care for that sort of thing, one will not much like jam cake. There are probably other disqualifiers as well, but those are the jam cake qualities that come the most to my mind.