For the last couple of months, I’ve been testing sort of outrageous doctored cake mix recipes for an event coming up at the Anchorage Museum that looks at the evolution of cake recipes in Alaska as a way to see how the Cold War era changed how women baked and saw themselves. The “Better Than Tom Selleck” cake is my favorite.
Alaskans were disproportionately reliant on canned fruit, and canned pineapple was one of the first fruits widely available here. Pineapple cakes can be found in Alaska’s community and church cookbooks going back almost 100 years. Flash forward to the 1970s, when cake-mix cakes had totally taken over cookbooks, and “poke cakes” became a common thing. These were sheet cakes, pierced with holes, soaked in Jell-O, pudding or condensed milk and loaded with toppings, including Cool Whip and crumbled candy bars. This led to a bunch of very indulgent cakes jokingly named “Better Than Sex” or “BTS” cakes. Some were named more specifically for hunky actors like Robert Redford and Tom Selleck, who played a charming, mustachioed private investigator on the show “Magnum, P.I.,” set in Oahu. I picked this cake to adapt because it combined both our long tradition of pineapple cakes and the 1970s cake mix craze. And it involves maraschino cherries, which I get nostalgic about because I grew up eating them in canned fruit cocktail, also a longtime Alaska staple.
This recipe is written for a regular coconut cake mix, but I like the Dolly Parton mix the best — it calls for more eggs and butter instead of oil. Use it if you can find it! It’s usually at Walmart. I toned down this recipe a bit, removing a layer of instant vanilla pudding that some versions call for. I also used condensed coconut milk instead of condensed milk, which has a deeper flavor, and I reduced the sugar. I thought about Tom Selleck’s mustache the whole time.
Better Than Tom Selleck Cake
Ingredients:
1 package coconut cake mix
3 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 cup water
1 14-ounce can condensed coconut milk, divided
1 20-ounce can crushed pineapple
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cup shredded coconut
Maraschino cherries for serving, optional
Instructions: Preheat the oven to 350. Grease a 13-by-9-inch pan with cooking spray. Prepare cake mix, blending it with eggs, oil and water. Pour into the pan and bake according to package directions. Meanwhile, drain crushed pineapple well, reserving its juice. Whisk together the pineapple juice and half the condensed coconut milk. When the cake is done, but still hot, poke it all over with a fork and pour the pineapple/condensed milk mixture over it, allowing it to absorb. While the cake is cooling to room temperature, whip the cream and other half of the condensed coconut milk until spreadable. Fold in the pineapple solids. Spread the cooled cake with the whipped cream-pineapple topping. Sprinkle with the shredded coconut. Refrigerate for an hour before serving. If desired, decorate each piece with a cherry.
(This recipe was adapted from “Let them Eat: Cold War Anxieties, Cake Mix, and Alaska Women’s Inner Lives,” a recipe zine produced by the Anchorage Museum.)