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Cocoanut Drops
— Mrs. E. S. Root
One-fourth pound cocoanut, one and one-fourth cups confectioners' sugar or three-fourths cup granulated sugar, one-half teaspoon lemon or vanilla extract, whites of two small eggs, onefourth of an even teaspoon of cream tartar. Beat the whites of the eggs with the cream tartar very stiff, add a pinch of salt, beat in the sugar lightly, then the flavoring and cocoanut. Drop from a teaspoon on well-greased tins and bake in a slow oven thirty-five to forty minutes.
— Mrs. Stanley Vincent
A coconut macaroon in its plainest form: stiff whites, sugar, coconut, dried slowly rather than baked hard. Two things decide the outcome — the kind of coconut you buy and how low you keep the oven.
- Slow ovenSet the oven to 300F. At that heat the drops dry out and set pale gold in the 35-40 minutes given; at 350F the sugar colours and the edges scorch before the centres firm.
- The coconutA quarter pound is roughly 1 1/2 cups of dried, unsweetened shredded coconut, the packaged form widely sold by 1900, though plenty of cooks still grated their own. Bagged sweetened flaked coconut carries a good deal of added sugar — commonly around a third of its weight; if that is all you have, cut the sugar in the recipe or the drops will run and candy.
- The two sugar optionsThey are not interchangeable by volume by accident — 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar and 3/4 cup granulated weigh about the same. Confectioners' sugar dissolves into the whites without deflating them and gives a softer drop; granulated gives a slightly crisper, chewier one.
- Egg whitesTwo small eggs means roughly 1/4 cup of whites, about 60 g. Modern large eggs will overshoot; measure rather than count.
- Folding, not beating"Beat in the sugar lightly" is the hinge. Add the sugar in a slow stream while the mixer runs, then fold the coconut in by hand. Stirring the coconut in vigorously collapses the meringue and the drops spread into flat wafers.
- Greased tinsGreased sheets were the best available then; sugar-heavy meringue still tends to weld itself to them. Parchment lifts cleanly and needs no fat.
- Doneness and coolingThey are done when set, dry to the touch and barely coloured — they crisp as they cool, so a soft centre at the end of baking is correct. Let them cool on the sheet before lifting.
- YieldAbout 18 to 20 teaspoon-sized drops. They keep several days in a tin but soften in humid weather.
Coconut drops are the thrifty American descendant of the almond macaroon, which reached English and colonial kitchens as a confection of ground nuts bound with egg white and sugar. Coconut displaced the almond in ordinary home baking through the late nineteenth century, when commercially prepared shredded and dried coconut began to be sold packaged and by the pound, putting a tropical ingredient within reach of an inland village grocery. The result is a recipe with no flour and no butter at all — the sort of thing a cook made when she had whites left over from a custard or a gold cake, and needed something to fill a plate.