Italian Cream Sheet Cake

Italian Cream Sheet Cake

2 cups sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
5 eggs, separated
1 tsp. baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
2 cups cake flour
1 cup flaked coconut
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans

Icing
1 1/2 lbs. powdered sugar
1 pkg (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
milk to moisten (2 - 3 Tbl)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray a quarter sheet cake pan (14 x 10) with non-stick spray. Whip egg whites until stiff. In a large bowl cream sugar and butter. Add egg yolks one at a time beating after each addition. Dissolve baking soda in buttermilk. Add 1/2 buttermilk, 1/2 flour to butter/sugar/egg mix, beat well. Add remaining buttermilk and flour, beat well. Fold in coconut,vanilla egg whites and nuts. Pour into pan. Bake 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Icing:
Mix butter and cheese. Add sugar, vanilla and enough milk to moisten to a spreading
consistency. Ice completely cooked cake. I garnish with coconut and chopped pecans.

This recipe was sent to me by a friend. I made very few changes. One change I did make was using all butter and not butter and shortening which the original recipe called for. I also changed the cooking temperature to 325 degrees and baked it in a sheet pan. Reason? It makes a 3 layer cake and I don't have 3 cake pans of the same size. But this worked out great. I can't offer changes for this because it just wouldn't be an Italian Cream if I did. But if you want to make it into a 3 layer, raise the temperature to 350 degrees and use 3 pans of the same size baking for
about 25 - 30 minutes.