I hope you're all having a great week so far 😁❤️

My father turned 79 yesterday. I made a coconut marquise to please him. He loves coconut desserts and "that cream"--he means pastry cream--. I managed to add a single layer of pastry cream, so I should use coconut cream for all the rest. It turned out pretty well.

The piece of cake you see above is part of the little marquise I made with the leftovers. Below you can see a litle piece of the cake I actually took to my father's. It was polished off in a few minutes. I didn't get the chance to make a decent picture 😄

INGREDIENTS

In Venezuela, it's customary to use María Biscuits when making a marquise. Puig is my favorite brand and it's also my father's.

So I used Puig María biscuits instead of ladyfingers, which are also an option.

To soak the biscuits:

• 1 cup coconut milk
• 30 ml cane honey

For the coconut cream:

• 3 cups homemade coconut milk
• 1/3 cup eggyolks
• 4 spoonfuls cornstarch
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 spoonfuls coconut oil

For the pastry cream:

• 1/3 cup coconut milk
• 1 cup condensed milk
• 1/4 cup egg yolk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

For the coconut milk:

• 3 dry coconuts & their water
• extra water as needed

For garnish:

• Sweet dehydrated grated coconut & ground cinnamon to taste

A marquise doesn't require baking, so it can be assembled in any container you prefer. I used a pyrex (28 x 19 x 6 cm) simply because it seemed better for presentation; besides, I didn't need to cover it because I knew the cake would be finished in an instant.

THE PROCESS 😋

The first thing I needed done was the delicious hot coconut milk. I love it.

COCONUT MILK

I needed a little more than a liter, so 3 coconuts should be enough. I started bu burning them directly on the stove.

I held them with my kitchen tongs and gave them a few turns to distribute the heat of the flame as evenly as possible until they cracked.

I opened the soft pore with a pair of scissors. Once I had taken the water out, I hit each coconut to finish braking them open.

I removed the coconut meat from the shells and left the endocarp. After this, I washed the pieces well under the tap to remove the ashes.

I cut the coconut into pieces of about 4x1 cm, small enough to be processed by the blender.

The coconut pieces and the water went into the blender glass. I did need to add an extra cup of water as I had the blender process the meat of the three coconuts.

The blender did the job in a minute or so, my loyal friend 🙃 I poured the content into my yogurt dripping bag, which I had placed on top of the pot where I would cooked the milk a little.

And I squeezed.

The milk looked and smelled great, super fresh. I'm a coconut lover ❤️

I added the salt and cooked the milk over medium fire without letting it boil. I used a whisk to stir while cooking so it wouldn't curdle.

After it had released the heat a little, I transferres to a measuring jug with spout, which just makes my job easier.

COCONUT CREAM

The hard part was making the milk. The cream is done in a snap, so if you use canned milk, this is twice easier.

I started by making some syrup with a cup of water and a cup of sugar

When the syrup looked homogeneous, I added the eggyolks and the cornstarch each mixed with some of the coconut milk, and then added the rest of the cocnut milk. Finally, I let it cook while stirring until it thickened and added the coconut oil.

The cream was ready in a couple of minutes. I'd pour it over the soaked biscuits.

TIME TO SOAK THE BISCUITS & START ASSEMBLING THE MARQUISE

I soaked the first layer of biscuits directly inside the pyrex. I'd be using 12 biscuits per layer. 4 layers in total. I soaked them in a mix of coconut milk and cane honey. And I added extra coconut milk as I considered it necessary. The more the merrier 😁

At this point, it was time for the first layer of coconut cream. The coconut milk had turned into this smooth cream after it was cooked with the cornstarch.

I went soaking every biscuit and arranging them all in layers which would be covered with more coconut cream.

...and more soaked biscuits.

...and mpre coconut cream.

I gently pressed every time with the back of a spoon, to help release any air that might be trapped between the cookie layers; this way you get a more compact cake.

AND INTO THE FREEZER

Only the pastry cream topping and garnish were missing. The cake went into the freezer while I made the pastry cream.

PASTRY CREAM

This version of pastry cream was quick and easy. I mixed condensed milk, egg yolks, cornstarch, coconut milk and vanilla essence in the amounts indicated in the ingredients list, and then I let it cook while stirring until thick.

When it had cooled a little, I poured it on the cold cake. I would then garnish it and take it back to the freezer so it cooled faster.

I distibuted the topping as evenly as I could.

Then I sprinkled some sweet dehydrated grated coconut that's been in my fridge for a good while--two years perhaps, and it's still fresh 😜

I looked at it, and it looked good! I smelled it and it smelled good, too!

I was happy with the result, and so was my father.

This marquise was really very good, even when it looked like lasagna 😂🤣 However, for future family cakes, I plan to use only coconut milk instead of cow's milk, since we all seem to love it.

As usual, I hope this post has been helpful 😁❤️

All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY for all them.

Thank you so much for your visit :)

Banner by @andresromero 🖤