Coconut Cake

I recently celebrated a birthday and Jess decided to make me a cake. I'm not a huge fan of sweets but I have really been craving a Coconut Cake that we had in Hawaii a few years ago. I believe it was at the Westin Maui; we had been wandering down the beach after drinking a bottle of pineapple wine and stopped in for a meal. I'm not sure what restaurant we ate in but this was the view from our table:

The cake was so good that we ended up going back a second time. Here is a photo I dug up of the original cake:

Jess did a pretty good job of making the cake from memory (I found the picture after she made it). We both remembered how light the cake was and how creamy the coconut filling was. We didn't realize that the there was only a little strawberry sauce, I guess our memories did a good job of enhancing what we liked.

Not having a recipe she turned to the internet for help. She found a Coconut Cake recipe on Paula Deen's website and figured it was close to wheat we had. I turns out Paula's recipe was drier and not a white as the Maui cake. The icing and filling was awesome but I think we will find a different cake recipe next time.

For the strawberry compote I just cooked them down in a little water, honey, cinnamon, and a splash of vanilla