Pineapple coconut cake

I found a recipe for a pineapple coconut cake in the local paper the other day. The recipe was created by a junior at a nearby technical school for some baking competition, and won first place (for good reason!). My mom and I decided to make this as the dessert for our Mother's Day dinner tonight, and it was heavenly! I tweaked the recipe a bit to make it work a little better, and here it (and my editorial comments) is:

Pineapple Coconut Cake

Cake
- 3 yellow cake mixes (the real recipe has a from-scratch cake recipe, but since I couldn't find emulsified shortening to use in it, we went with boxed mixes)

1. Prepare each cake mix as instructed on the box
2. Cut a circle of parchment paper big enough to cover the bottom of a 10" spring form pan
3. Grease the sides of the spring form pan
4. Pour one prepared cake mix in the pan
5. Bake at 350(-ish) until a pick inserted in the middle comes out clean (I think it took 25-30 minutes in my mom's not-always-the-best oven)
6. Cool cake completely before removing from pan
7. Repeat with the second and third cake mixes

Pineapple Sauce
- 2 1/4 C pineapple juice, divided
- 2 T lime juice
- 1 C sugar
- 1/4 C cornstarch
- 3/4 C crushed fresh pineapple (the crushed part is really important!)

1. Mix 2 cups of pineapple juice, lime juice, and sugar together in a saucepan
2. Heat the mixture until it boils
3. Combine 1/4 cup of pineapple juice and cornstarch
4. Whisk cornstarch mixture into boiling pineapple juice mixture (careful, that first drop of liquid will make it foam up)
5. Remove from heat and mix in pineapple
6. Let cool completely

Frosting
- 1.4 pounds white chocolate (equivalent of two bags of chips)
- 4 (8 oz) packages of cream cheese, softened
- 4 sticks of unsalted butter, softened (works best if the sticks are cut into 2 or 3 pieces)
- 1/4 C lemon juice

1. Melt choclate in a double boiler
2. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature (but don't let it harden!)
3. Beat cream cheese until light and fluffy (4-5 minutes)
4. Mix in melted chocolate
5. Add butter and lemon juice, and beat until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes)
6. Store in fridge until ready to use

Toasted Coconut
- 1 (14 oz) bag of flaked coconut (you could probably get away with a smaller bag...we had a lot left over)

1. Heat oven to 250
2. Spread coconut on shallow baking pan
3. Bake until golden brown, stirring frequently (we had a bad time with the coconut toasting process, so I won't even try to tell you how long this will take (I reduced the oven temperature from the original recipe significantly). But if I had to guess, I'd say 15 minutes?)
4. Let cool

Assembly
1. Place one cake on plate
2. Spread with a generous amount of frosting, and sprinkle with coconut
3. Place second cake on top of frosting
4. Spread with pineapple sauce (you'll probably have plenty of extra to drizzle over the served cake, if you want)
5. Place third cake on top
6. Frost sides and top of cake
7. Press coconut on to sides of cake (cover the sides completely. And you could probably put the coconut on top, if you wanted to).
8. Serve and enjoy your slice of tropical heaven

Some of the tweaks I made I didn't actually get to test out, so I can't 100% guarantee this recipe has perfected the cake (though I think it will). I'm storing the cake in the fridge so the frosting doesn't melt. You can supposedly store the leftover frosting in the fridge for up to a week. Also, you might want to consider cutting the frosting recipe a little bit. We had a lot left. It's a huge cake, and it's a bit of work, but totally worth. And if you want a smaller version, I would suggest making one cake mix, putting it in two 8" or 9" rounds, halving the sauce, coconut, and frosting recipes, cutting each cake in half, then layer frosting, sauce frosting. That's what I plan to do next time I make this. Enjoy!