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COCOA-NUT CAKES (another way)
Put eight ounces of butter and eight ounces of castor sugar into a basin, and beat them to a firm froth; add eight ounces of grated cocoanut, six ounces of sifted flour, and four beaten eggs one at a time. Line some cake moulds with buttered paper, and fill them three-parts full with the preparation, cook in a moderately hot oven. When done, brush over with egg and scatter some grated cocoa-nut over, put back in the oven for a moment to dry the cocoanut, then let it cool. Probable cost, 1s. 6d.
A straightforward creamed butter cake in Victorian weights, with coconut standing in for part of the flour. The only real difficulties are the oven description and the state of the coconut.
- Weights in cupsEight ounces butter is two sticks; eight ounces caster sugar is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons; six ounces flour is roughly 1 1/3 cups. Grated coconut at eight ounces is about 2 2/3 cups loosely packed.
- Caster sugarCaster is superfine granulated. Ordinary granulated works, but it creams less readily; a short blitz in a food processor gets you closer.
- The coconut"Grated cocoa-nut" means fresh coconut grated from the shell, which is moist and unsweetened. Unsweetened desiccated coconut is the nearest shelf equivalent, but it is much drier; the batter will be stiffer, and a tablespoon or two of milk helps. Sweetened flaked coconut will make the cakes cloying against the full measure of sugar.
- Oven"Moderately hot" has no exact modern equivalent; somewhere around 350-375F is a reasonable reading. Small cakes will likely take 18-25 minutes; a full-sized tin nearer 40.
- Adding the eggsFour eggs into eight ounces of creamed butter will curdle if they go in cold or fast. Have them at room temperature, beat each one in fully, and add a spoonful of the flour if the mixture starts to split.
- Buttered paper"Cake moulds lined with buttered paper" are small tins with cut parchment rounds. Paper liners or a well-buttered muffin tin do the same job; three-parts full is still the right level.
- The egg wash finishThe brush of egg and scattering of coconut goes on cakes already baked through, and back in only long enough to set and colour the topping - two or three minutes. Longer and the coconut on top scorches while the crumb dries out.
- YieldPerhaps 18 or so small cakes, or one 8-inch cake; the recipe gives no number. They should keep a couple of days in a tin.
Coconut arrived in British kitchens in quantity in the second half of the nineteenth century, as steam shipping and colonial trade made whole nuts a regular sight in greengrocers' windows and desiccated coconut a factory product. The book gives coconut its own run of entries - cakes, puddings, biscuits, soup. The instruction to grate it yourself suggests that desiccated coconut was not yet the default, and that a cook was expected to crack the shell and work the flesh on a grater. The costing of 1s. 6d. is typical of the book's habit of pricing each dish, aimed at a household budgeting for the week rather than at a professional kitchen.