Monday's are crazy busy baking days for me. I don't work at MPIP, instead I go to A Full Plate Cafe and waitress and bake desserts and cornbread for the week ahead. This week the most delicious thing I made was Coconut Cake. When I first stumbled upon the recipe I had some fears about it. Well, one fear really, surrounding one ingredient: Tofu. Tofu in a cake? Really? Yes, really. It's amazingly delicious.

And look how pretty it turned out! Even if you have no dietary restrictions, this cake is a lower-fat version of a traditional coconut cake and has a beautiful crumb and texture despite the absence of eggs and dairy.

For the Coconut cake you'll need:

8 ounces silken tofu (1/2 of a package)
3 cups of sugar
2 cups coconut milk
2 cups coconut flakes
1 cup canola oil
5 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease two 9 inch round cakes pans.
Place tofu, sugar, coconut milk, coconut flakes and oil in the bowl of a food processor and puree until thick and uniform in texture. In a large bowl sift the flour, baking soda and baking powder to remove lumps. Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until combined. The batter will be thick. Pour batter into the prepared cake pans and bake for about an hour.

I let my cake cool for about 15 minutes in the pans, then turned them out onto wire racks to cool completely.

For the icing you'll need:
2 cups Earth Balance
1/4 cup coconut milk
1 box of powdered sugar

Using an electric mixer combine the Earth Balance and coconut milk until smooth, then add the powdered sugar. My frosting didn't really come together, even after adding another cup of powdered sugar. My original plan was to make a traditional layer cake and cover it with more coconut, but looking at my soupy frosting I knew it wasn't going to happen. Instead, I cut large wedges from a single layer of cake, spooned a generous helping of the icing over the slice of cake and garnished with a bit of toasted coconut. Delicious and not terribly bad for you either!

Again, if you weren't aware ahead of time that no animal fats or products were used in making this dessert, you wouldn't know they weren't really there. And no, it doesn't taste like tofu either, it just tastes like wonderful awesome coconutiness.