After reading many reviews I decided to use a different recipe for the crust. Perfect! It was not served till 5 hrs after it was made and there were no signs of it being soggy, I had a piece the following day and it still wasn't soggy. The following recipe does not contain a lot of sugar, so for those that thought it was too sweet... give this a try: 3 cups of flour. 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder. 1 cup butter (room temp/softened). 1 cup sugar. 1 egg(room temp). 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cream sugar and butter together, mix in egg and vanilla. Add in all dry ingredients and mix by hand. Dough may seem a little flaky. Roll out with wax/parchment paper on to pan. Hints: using a baking stone gives best results. My crust kinda stuck to the pan so it took a little work when serving... maybe bake it on parchment paper? It tasted as good as it looked. My father in law said it was like the desserts you get in high end restaurants!

Reviewed On: Jul. 6, 2009

I have made this recipe too many times to count! I don't know what went wrong with those that didn't like it. My advice: FOLLOW the suggestions of others. I read through MANY reviews and this is what I got: 1.) Add in 1 more cup of sugar and 1 more tsp. vanilla. 2.) Let the dough chill overnight (saves you from frustrations) 3.) leave your bowl of dough in the fridge and just take out the portions you are working on. 4.) Use parchment paper when cutting out shapes. You will need confectioners sugar, or white sugar, or more flour when rolling out your dough. 5.) My NEW suggestion is, after cutting my cookies out, and removing the excess dough, I leave the cut outs on the parchment paper and place the whole thing in the freezer for a few minutes. When they are stiff enough to handle I place them in a air tight container and let them sit in the freezer overnight or at least a few hrs. Since it only takes a few minutes to stiffen I rotate between 2-3 pieces of paper (gotta conserve!) I cook them straight out of the freezer. It makes handling them a breeze and they keep their shape significantly better when done this way. Warning: you will obviously need to plan things out when making them. I guarantee the results are worth it!!!! As another viewer remarked: they come out as good (I think BETTER) than the cookies in the mall! I have had people trying to pay me to make them orders!!! Good Luck.....Cook-on!

Reviewed On: Jan. 7, 2009

This cake is the best! I read a lot of reviews and here is the advice I followed: Do Not Over Mix the batter or it will fall apart! Check cake 20 min. into baking, didn't take the 30 min. the recipe called for. Make 1 1/2 amount of frosting. Add more cornstarch to thicken up frosting or add instant Vanilla pudding. I didn't add pudding, because I wasn't sure WHEN to add it in. Frosting took approx. 30 min. to cook and longer to cool. Plan on investing a good amount of time into it. (But it is well worth it!) Toast the coconut and pecans. Something new I discovered while making this: I must have over mixed because I had trouble getting the cake out of the pan. The bottom layer began to crumble. I stuck the other two pans in the freezer for approx. 1 hr? To remove the frozen cake I placed a towel soaked in very hot water on the pan and it came right out! The cake is easy to handle while frozen and thawed out in the time it took to me to frost it. (I took a good amount of time frosting it) Freezing it didn't dry it out. It tasted and looked amazing! Hope this helps!

Reviewed On: Jul. 31, 2007