Grandma Barb’s Italian Cream Cake
Watch me make this Italian Cream Cake from start to finish!!
You can ALWAYS find an Italian cream cake at my family holiday shindigs. I think everyone in my family has my grandma Barb’s highly requested Italian Cream cake recipe (and now so do you, welcome to the family!) so it really doesn’t matter who brings it. This recipe is fail-proof and always comes out tasting fabulous!
The cake itself is soft and moist with a super yummy vanilla-coconut-butter flavor. The frosting is a regular cream cheese frosting with coconut and pecans added to compliment the Italian cream cake. It’s delish and even if you don’t like coconut, I bet you’ll still love this cake!
My husband is such a coconut hater. He likes the taste of coconut but not the texture so I make sure to use finely shredded coconut and then process it to break up the flak, even more, when I’m making it for him.
Italian cream cake is such a lovely, elegant, and delicious cake. It’s so easy to make that there is really no reason to wait until a special occasion too. Make it today, just because.
Get the Recipe: Italian Cream Cake
Ingredients
- CAKE
- 1/2 cup butter-flavored shortening
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 2 cups white sugar
- 5 eggs, separated (room temperature)
- 3 teaspoons real vanilla extract
- 2 cups cake flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 cup real buttermilk, (room temperature)
- 1 1/2 cup finely shredded sweetened coconut flakes
- FROSTING
- 16 oz cream cheese, room tempt.
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 4 cups confectioners sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 1/2 cups finely shredded sweetened coconut
- 1 1/2 cups pecans pieces
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325.
- Grease and flour three 9-inch round cake pans. Set aside.
- In a large bowl cream together shortening, butter and sugar.
- Add egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- In a separate bowl combine flour and baking soda.
- Alternate adding the buttermilk and flour into the sugar mixture. Starting and ending with the buttermilk. Be sure to mix well after each addition.
- Stir in vanilla.
- In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.
- Fold egg whites into batter.
- Stir in coconuts and pecans.
- Pour batter into prepared pans and bake for 25-27 minutes.
- Remove from oven and let cakes sit in pans for 5 minutes before removing from pans and placing on a cooling rack to finish cooling.
- Make the frosting by creaming together cream cheese, butter, vanilla and confectioners sugar.
- Stir in coconut and pecans.
- Frost & decorate cooled cake layers as desired (see video to see how I frost and decorated)
Video
Notes
Store in the fridge. Remove and let come to room temperature before serving.
Loved this recipe (along with many others…my fav banana pudding cup cakes) will be making this often along side my humming bird cake…fyi humming bird cakes most often include banans and crushed pineapples…two completely different cakes.
I haven’t tried the Italian Cream Cake yet but I am but could I get the recipe for Grandma’s Cream Cheese Pound Cake I have been wanting to try one an never could find the recipe until I saw it on your email you sent to me. Thanks if you would send it to me.
What an amazing soft, fluffy cake! I only wish I made this version before I tried the Thomas Keller coconut mayonnaise version yesterday, which I basically threw out as they were like hockey pucks. I was determined to get this recipe figured out and tried yours today. I should have put parchment paper on the bottom of the pan but other than that, it was foolproof and easy. I made an Italian meringue instead of the cream cheese and dug out the old blowtorch which I almost never use.
One question – the recipe says to add the nuts to the batter (step 10)? But it’s listed in the frosting ingredients, so I left it out of the cake batter.
Thanks for sharing!
Just to verify! Someone asked before but still couldnt find the reply. Is iT baking SODA or baking POWDER the ingredient for the cake? Also, for those not liking coconut texture, can they use Coconut extract?
Soda. I’ve never used extract in replace of coconut.
The cake recipe is almost identical to a very old Italian Cream Cake recipe I have. The difference is mine uses regular flour and this uses cake flour. I made the cake using cake flour and there was no difference in taste between cake flour and regular flour. However, I decided to use this frosting recipe and was extremely disappointed. 16 ounces of cream cheese makes a frosting that is not nearly thick enough – the frosting drips down sides of cake! My recipe uses 8 ounces of cream cheese and identical amounts of butter, vanilla and conf. Sugar as this frosting. The consistency is much better – no dripping.
Hmmm…I’ve never had a problem with dripping icing.
OMG!!! This cake turned out beautifully! My family says this is probably the best thing I’ve baked yet.
The cake was moist, light, and flavorful. The icing was not too sweet.
I’m not a nut fan so I didn’t put any in the batter or the frosting. I just put them on top of the cake.
So glad you guys like it!