Pistachio Melon Cake (from RaisingJane)

“How difficult can it be?” I asked myself. Slice some melons, make some coconut cream, shell some pistachios, and tidy up the kitchen.

I’d had my eye on this beautiful cake from raisingjane.org for quite a while. (The recipe was originally published a year ago and re-published again just recently.) 

I practically had the entire recipe and method memorized because I’d studied it and read it and deliberated over it for so long. Slice melons, whip up coconut cream, shell pistachios, tidy kitchen.

(This is where I mention that I was hosting a small dinner party in a few hours.)

The stumbling block would be the coconut cream. I’d tried whipping coconut cream on various occasions before – all great failures! In my experience, the fat in the chilled can never separated and rose to the top, leaving me with a watery mess. Everyone in ‘perfect internet world’ has great success with whipped coconut cream, but not me.

According to the original recipe, I HAD to use Native Forest full-fat (not low-fat) Organic Coconut Milk, but of course, my tiny town barely carries any coconut milk at all. So being the ridiculous person I am, I ordered 6 cans and had them ‘rushed’ to my doorstep.  You can see from the photos, that even after a few days in the fridge, the coconut cream was really weird….. more like grease and solid fat. Bleck.

I tried and tried to whip it, but eventually ended up adding lots of powdered sugar and milk and maybe even a bit of Earth Balance. In the end, it tasted great, but so frustrating! I will NEVER try coconut cream again.

The other weird thing about the coconut cream was that it did not cling at all to the melon slices. Not a pretty presentation. No one cared, of course, but still after all the effort, I was expecting a nice slice of cake with the frosting attached!

Anyway, if you’re looking for a beautiful fruit dessert, and you don’t mind cleaning up a huge mess, and you can live with frosting that falls off, give this a try. Original recipe and beautiful photos HERE.