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Cocoanut and Cocoa Muffins
2 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons sugar 3 tablespoons cocoa 2 eggs, beaten ¾ cup milk 2 cups flour 3 teaspoons baking powder 1 pinch salt 1 cup Dromedary Cocoanut Cream butter and sugar together, add cocoa and eggs and beat well; add milk, four sifted with baking powder and salt, then add cocoanut and mix well. Bake in greased and floured muffin pans.
A plain muffin batter enriched with cocoa and a full cup of shredded coconut. The original gives no oven temperature, no time and no yield, so those are the gaps to fill before you start.
- OvenMuffins of this size and richness want 400F. Bake 18 to 22 minutes, until a pick comes out clean and the tops spring back.
- Milk quantityThe milk is printed as "34 cup," which is a broken three-quarter fraction. Three-quarters of a cup is right for 2 cups of flour here; the batter should drop thickly from the spoon, not pour.
- CocoaThis means plain unsweetened cocoa powder, not a sweetened drinking mix. Natural (non-alkalized) cocoa was the usual sort in American home baking at this date; Dutch-process gives a darker, milder result.
- The coconutDromedary shredded coconut was sold moist in a sealed carton, and packaged coconut of this period was commonly sweetened. Modern sweetened flaked coconut is the closest match; if you use dry unsweetened coconut, soak it briefly in a little of the milk or the muffins will drink moisture from the crumb.
- MixingCream the butter and sugar properly, but once the flour goes in, stir only until no dry streaks remain. Two tablespoons of butter is a lean batter and overworking it turns the muffins tough and tunnelled.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons to 2 cups of flour is on the generous side by current practice; 2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons of modern double-acting powder gives the same lift without an aftertaste.
- PansGreased and floured is correct for the period; paper liners work equally well. Fill the cups about two-thirds.
- YieldAbout 12 standard muffins. Best the day they are baked, as the coconut goes chewy on keeping.
This comes from a booklet published to sell Dromedary shredded coconut, a brand of the Hills Brothers Company of New York, which by the early twentieth century was also known for dates and citron. Packaged coconut was a genuine novelty: fresh nuts had to be cracked, drained and grated at home, and the pre-shredded moist product in a sealed carton turned coconut from a project into a pantry staple. Booklets like this one existed to prove the point, working the ingredient into every meal of the day. The older spelling cocoanut was common in American print into the 1920s.