Hi - Karen - Couldn't you

improvise by using those recipes calling for cake mixes, combined with pudding mix, sour cream, etc. and just adding chopped marachino cherries and maybe using a food processor, take some coconut and run it through until it was finer??

It sounds great - the frosting is a 7-minute boiled frosting you're talking about, and I used to LOVE it when the outside got cystalized and kind of crunchy.

Years ago, my mother would make a simple 9 x 13 white sheet cake (using the first mixes that came out back in the 50's) and she would frost it with a homemade butter cream frosting that had chopped maraschino cherries in it, and the liquid from the cherries was what she used to make the frosting instead of milk (or maybe it was some of each) I had forgotten how delicious that was. Every evening for dinner, we'd get a small piece for dessert - it would last the whole week!

It's kind of a food snob thing these days to put your nose in the air over maraschino cherries, but I still love them!