Italian Four-Layer Coconut Cream Cake

I cut back on the sugar by 1/4, but then found the cake to be a bit bland. I wonder if it would have benefited from some coconut extract. The frosting was too sweet for our family, so we added another 1/4 of butter and 1/3 of cream cheese. That made the frosting softer, but it was easy to spread and more to our liking.

This is an awesome cake! Flavorful, moist, coconut-y, and beautiful too! Since my coconut was sweetened, I lessened the sugar in the cake to 1 1/2 cups and added a 1/2 tsp salt (and used all butter instead of a combo of butter and shortening). I pulsed the shredded coconut in my food processor a few times before adding it to the cake batter--this makes for a finer texture, and is just totally my personal preference. I don't have four 9" cake pans, so I baked the cakes only in two 9" pans (they took 35 minutes to bake), and cut the cakes in half once they cooled. This worked perfectly. I completely forget to add the walnuts to the cake batter, so I simply sprinkled them in the filling, alongside the extra shredded coconut, in between the layers of cake. The frosting is great as well. I needed to add about 2-3 tbsps of heavy cream to get a spreadable consistency, however. Had just enough frosting to fill and frost the outside of the cake, with none leftover. I also needed quite a bit more than 1/2 cup shredded coconut to add to the filling and outside of the cake (probably a few cups worth). All said and done though, this is an absolutely delicious cake! Not too sweet, just the right amount of coconut, and not overpowered by a strong cream cheese frosting either. Everything works perfectly in tandem here. This will be my go-to coconut cake from now on! Thank you so much for the recipe! (Final note: I did not need to add dowels or wooden skewers to keep the cake layers together