My grandmother loved coconut, and she passed that love along to me. I remember her giving me pinches of flaked coconut — sweet, almost floral, with just the right amount of chewy texture — from the bag in her bakery ingredients cabinet. She once made a chocolate bundt cake with a tunnel of coconut cream, which I still dream about. And she always had macaroons and Mounds/Almond Joy bars on hand, along with these confections:
I’ve created a shrine to my grandmother and our favorite flavor in my own kitchen.
She also liked to keep a Pepperidge Farm Coconut Cake in her freezer, for special occasions — usually a birthday, a guest, or a family gathering. When my family gathered after her passing in 2021 (just shy of her 100th birthday), you can bet one of these coconut cakes was on the table.
Since then, we always try to have something coconut-flavored on-deck for dessert at my sister’s house in Connecticut. It’s a way of keeping our grandmother with us.
Last year, my mom turned 80, and we had a PF coconut cake to celebrate. Unfortunately, the cake tasted…bland. The cake was dry, and there was barely any coconut flavor. WHY are you messing with success, Pepperidge Farm??? (Well, we can guess why. They likely changed the recipe, as so many companies often do these days, choosing cheaper ingredients to cut costs.)
Eventually, we shrugged off our disappointment and moved on. This year, for my mom’s birthday, I wanted to bake the cake myself, and start a new tradition. And what better cake to offset the dry, flavorless Pepperidge Farm disappointment than tres leches, with a coconutty twist?
Avengers, assemble!
I baked a tres leches one other time, and I don’t remember having any problems with it. This one, unfortunately, did not go as planned. The cake didn’t seem to rise high enough. I’m thinking either I need to replace my baking powder, or I beat the egg whites too long (the recipe said they should be stiff, and that’s what they were, but maybe they were too stiff?). In any case, I ended up with less of a tres leches cake and more of a tres leches flood plain.
Needless to say, I was bummed. I was hoping to create a sweet new tradition, and instead I created a sloppy mess. But what do we do when things don’t go as planned? We pick up the pieces (or in this case, the cake slices) and try something else.
I had to forgo the frosting, but I think this still counts as a tres leches, given the well-absorbed evaporated, condensed, and coconut milks.
It was delicious, and it was special. And I’m ready to try again next year, with fresh baking powder and a lighter whisk on the egg whites. I think my grandmother would be proud — and eager for a second helping, with extra toasted coconut on top.
This reminds me of a scene in Witchycakes: Sweet Magic where Mama Moon accidentally drops a beach plum tart. She’s about to throw it away when Blue suggests she repurpose it. And Mama does, by turning the broken pieces into a trifle she calls Beach Plum Crumble. (I’ve included a recipe in the back so readers can give it a try.)
That plot point was inspired by an anecdote I remembered from Chef’s Table, a show that follows a different chef in each episode. The first episode of the first season follows Massimo Botura, who’s the chef and owner of Osteria Francescana, one of the best restaurants in the world. He recounts the story behind the restaurant’s iconic dessert, Oops! I Dropped the Lemon Tart.
Botura’s story has stayed with me and informs me as a writer and as a human. It offers two lessons. The first is that imperfection is beautiful. The second is that accidents and mistakes and failures happen, but it’s what we do in the aftermath that counts. We can find the courage to try again, learning from past experience. We can also pick up the pieces and make something even more amazing in the process.
I’ve been a published author for more than twenty years, and my career has had many (many!) ups and downs. You might say I’ve dropped my share of lemon tarts. But I’m always ready to try again. And sometimes I can even repurpose pieces of a story in a new way. The Infamous Ratsos started as minor characters in another piece. LICORICE was written after I’d just been laid off from a job I loved, and suddenly had a LOT of time on my hands. A new novel in the works originated as an idea for a picture book.
In writing and in life, all we can do is keep trying, learning from our messy, sloppy, silly mistakes, and making the best of it.