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Cocoanut Creams
To one cup of shredded cocoanut add four tablespoonfuls of thick cream and a cup of sifted confectioners' sugar. Flavor with vanilla. Roll into small balls and set on oiled paper to dry.
An uncooked fondant-style confection that depends entirely on the ratio of sugar to moisture. It comes together in minutes, but the coconut of 1900 was drier than most of what is sold now.
- CocoanutPeriod "shredded cocoanut" was unsweetened and fairly dry, closer to today's desiccated or macaroon coconut than to the moist sweetened flake sold in bags. Sweetened flake will make the balls cloying and slack; use unsweetened, and chop it finer if the shreds are long.
- Thick creamThis means heavy cream, 36 percent fat or better; cream of the period, having stood, could also be thicker or a little soured. Four tablespoons is a quarter cup, and it is a starting point rather than a rule — add it a spoonful at a time until the mass just holds together.
- Confectioners' sugarSift it, as directed, since the whole structure is sugar suspended in a little fat and liquid and any lumps will stay lumps. Most modern powdered sugar contains cornstarch, which may take up slightly more moisture, so you may need a touch more cream.
- ConsistencyThe mixture should feel like stiff putty and not stick to the palms. If it is tacky, work in more sugar; if it crumbles, another teaspoon of cream. Chilling the mass for fifteen minutes makes rolling much easier.
- Oiled paperParchment or a silicone mat replaces it and needs no oiling. Leave the balls uncovered at cool room temperature for two to four hours, until the surface sets to a dry crust.
- StorageBecause these are set with fresh cream and never cooked, they are perishable in a way that boiled fondant is not. Keep them refrigerated in a closed tin after the first day and eat them within about three days.
- YieldOne cup of coconut with a cup of sugar makes a couple of dozen balls or more, depending on how large you roll them. The recipe doubles without trouble.
Uncooked cream candies belong to a family of "French creams" that filled the candy chapters of American household books from the 1880s onward — confections built from confectioners' sugar bound with cream, egg white or butter rather than from boiled syrup, and therefore within reach of a cook with no thermometer and no marble slab. Coconut arrived in quantity in northern kitchens through the Caribbean shipping trade, and by the 1890s commercially shredded and dried coconut in packets had made it an everyday pantry item rather than a curiosity to be cracked and grated at home; the older spelling "cocoanut", still standard here, is conventionally attributed to confusion with cocoa or cacao. Candy-making at home was also a social occasion in this period, the candy pull and the sweets tray being staples of parlour entertaining, and books of this sort give whole sections to confections a modern cook would simply buy.