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Cocoanut Loaf Cake
One cup of sugar, one-half cup of butter, three-quarters cup of milk, three € eggs, two and one-half cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder and one grated cocoanut. Cream the sugar and butter, take the milk of the cocoanut and if not enough add sweet milk to make the three-quarters of a cup. Add the beaten yolks, then flour and baking powder sifted, then beaten whites, and lastly the grated cocoanut, reserving some for the frosting of the loaf. This is to be baked in a deep tin. -Mrs George Brewer.
A plain butter cake enriched with fresh coconut and its water, from the era when a whole coconut was a normal Saturday purchase. The method is standard creaming; the only real work is the coconut itself.
- One grated cocoanutA medium coconut yields roughly 3 to 4 cups of grated meat, so reserve about a cup for the top and fold the rest in. Unsweetened desiccated or frozen grated coconut works; sweetened flaked coconut will make the cake cloying and should be cut back by a third.
- The coconut waterPierce the eyes and drain before cracking. A coconut gives anywhere from a scant half cup to a full cup of water, which is why the recipe tells you to top it up with milk rather than promising a quantity. Taste it first: if it is sour or soapy, the nut is old, and the whole coconut should be discarded.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk used with saleratus in other recipes of the period.
- Butter and saltHalf a cup is one stick, 4 ounces. Butter of the period was usually salted; with unsalted butter add a quarter teaspoon of salt with the flour.
- Separated eggsThe whites are beaten and folded in near the end, before the coconut, and the batter should not be stirred down afterward. Fold the heavy grated coconut in with a light hand or the lift is lost.
- A deep tin, and the ovenA 9x5 loaf pan, greased and floured, or a deep 8-inch round. The recipe names no temperature; about 350F for roughly 50 to 65 minutes suits a loaf. The grated coconut keeps the crumb moist and slows the bake, so test with a skewer at the centre rather than trusting the clock.
- The frostingNone is given, though coconut is reserved for it. A boiled white icing or a simple confectioners' sugar and milk glaze, applied while the cake is cool and pressed with the reserved coconut, would both be in keeping with the period.
- YieldOne loaf, ten to twelve slices. Fresh coconut cake stales quickly; wrap it well and eat within two days.
Coconut cake became an American home-baking fixture in the second half of the nineteenth century, a rise often linked to the schooners running between the Caribbean and East Coast ports, which are said to have made whole nuts cheap enough to buy on a whim. Grating one was tedious work, and the arrival of commercially shredded and packaged coconut, generally traced to Philadelphia in the 1890s, is what turned the dish from an occasion cake into a weeknight one. This version still assumes the fresh nut, and uses its water in the batter rather than throwing it out, which is the mark of a cook working from the whole ingredient. The recipe carries the name of a contributor, Mrs George Brewer, in the period habit of printing readers' contributions under their married names.