I 've been trying to get a monkey off my back for years. A baking monkey. The worst kind. Baking and I have a long, contentious history. There was the Moravian sugar cake that overflowed into the bottom of the oven and caught fire. The Christmas angel cookies that looked like obese Miami Beach vacationers. Lopsided layer cakes beyond number.

The problem, I decided several years ago, is that baking requires a special kind of mind. An exacting mind. Scientific. Willing to meticulously follow the most arcane directions, the ones that sound like instructions for assembling a stealth bomber in your backyard.

Baking does not take kindly to my favorite aspect of cooking: improvisation.

I believe there actually is a baking personality -- you don't see many chefs who are also bakers, or vice versa. I once discussed this with Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of "The Cake Bible," and she enthusiastically agreed. There is, and I don't have it. Yet I continue to fight nature.

Now, I can make a decent pound cake or angel food cake. I dump the ingredients in the stand mixer and let it do the work. But if facing anything more challenging, I must tread carefully for there be dragons here.

Many of my most memorable baking incidents involve attempts at coconut cake.

I love a good coconut cake. My grandmother made ones that looked like angels' pillows, tall, round and fluffy, with coconut that she had grated by hand from actual coconuts.

Also, my husband likes coconut cake. Many years ago, when I was still in that newlywed glow and longing to please my man (you're right; that boat has sailed), I decided to spend a day off preparing a coconut cake for his birthday.

In the process, I spent 30 minutes whacking a coconut with a hammer on the front stoop of our duplex and wore out a pink 1970s-vintage stand mixer that had actually belonged to my grandmother. It passed away, with a slight burning aroma, while handling a bowl of thick batter.

Then came the dreaded Seven-Minute Icing, a boiled frosting that must be beaten with an electric mixer in a double boiler over rapidly boiling water. The instructions in the old "Joy of Cooking" sounded like making candy. Vagaries of weather, particularly humidity, can make it runny and unspreadable. The directions suggested beating it in strong sunlight.

I can't recall exactly how long I beat the stuff -- there was only one electrical outlet, far from the stove, and I had to stop and plug the mixer back in when the stretched cord popped out -- but I believe cats have been herded in less time. I have cats and, therefore, a standard of comparison.

My husband arrived home to a string of four-letter words (hey, I just realized "cake" is a four-letter word). I ordered him to appreciate the thing, because it was the last he'd ever get.

Twenty-four years of store-bought coconut cakes ensued.

Earlier this year, after Southern food icon Edna Lewis died, a group of online food fans at eGullet offered a virtual tribute to her. Each person chose one of Lewis' recipes, prepared it, then wrote online about it. I eyed her recipe for Coconut Lane Cake. It was abundantly laced with bourbon. And if there's one thing I like even better than coconut, it's bourbon.

The chunky texture of the frosting -- and coconut cake is all about the frosting -- was more like what you'd find on a German chocolate cake, with chopped pecans and raisins in addition to the coconut, sugar, 12 egg yolks, 1 1/2 sticks of butter and half a cup of Wild Turkey. I thought I had followed the directions, but the result was way too runny to adhere to the sides of the cake, as in the photo with the recipe.

No one who sampled the cake complained. But it wasn't exactly what I had in mind, and the drippy frosting, which looked as if it belonged on a vampire wedding cake, disappointed me, once I sobered up.

Last weekend, the coconut-cake spirit seized me again. I found a recipe in a little book called "Cakewalk," and girded myself to attempt it, although it required a glaze and a frosting that suspiciously resembled the dreaded Seven-Minute Icing.

The cakes -- the easy part -- were in the oven as my husband flipped through Karen Barker's cookbook, "Sweet Stuff." With his methodical personality, he has become the baker in my house, and he was checking ingredients for a devil's food cake he planned to make for guests the following weekend.

"Hey, she says Shirley Corriher's book has a recipe for the world's best coconut cake," he said.

I slapped my head with a floured hand. Why didn't I think of "CookWise" in the first place? It has come to my aid so many times. And it did have the world's easiest coconut frosting: sour cream, coconut, sugar and vanilla, mixed together and chilled for 30 minutes. The cake was a little different from what I'd already made. I had used coconut milk instead of buttermilk, but I figured that couldn't hurt.

The frosting went in between the layers, not on the sides (yay!). After assembling the layers and frosting them, I refrigerated the cake overnight, as the book advised.

This was The Cake. It may not have been my grandmother's cake -- maybe nothing ever will be -- but it was moist, coconutty and sweet but not too sweet, thanks to the tang of the sour cream. Best of all, I could make it without taking a week off and requiring a vacation at a luxury spa afterward.

And there was still a little improvisation involved, since I had used the cake from one recipe and the frosting from another. So, ha, ha, baking gods. I can have my cake, and tweak it, too.