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Cocoanut Cream Cake
Cream two cups of sugar with three-fourths of a cup of butter. Add the yolks of three eggs, one cup of milk, three cups of flour with two teaspoons of Larkin Baking Powder and the beaten whites of the eggs. Flavor with one-half teaspoon of Larkin Vanilla Flavoring Extract.
For the Custard. Scald two cups of milk. Beat together one-half cup of sugar and one egg. Thicken with three tablespoons of Larkin Corn Starch moistened in a small part of the milk. Add one cup of Larkin Shredded Cocoanut and one-half teaspoon of Larkin Vanilla Flavoring Extract. Spread between the layers and over the top, sprinkling more of the cocoanut on the top layer.
A standard turn-of-the-century layer cake with a boiled coconut custard between the layers. The original gives no pan size, no oven temperature and no baking time, which was normal for a booklet aimed at cooks who already knew how a layer cake behaved.
- The Larkin productsEvery branded item is an ordinary pantry staple: baking powder, vanilla extract, cornstarch and shredded coconut. Substitute like for like. The book was a promotional publication, which is why the brand name appears five times in one recipe.
- Pans and ovenThree cups of flour with two cups of sugar makes a large cake; bake it in three 8-inch or two 9-inch round pans, greased and floured. The recipe gives no oven temperature or time; 350F for roughly 25 to 30 minutes suits 8-inch layers.
- The whitesThe recipe separates the eggs but never says to fold. Beat the whites to soft peaks and fold them in last, after the flour, or the leavening advantage is lost. Only three eggs are called for in the cake, whites and yolks both.
- Coconut, then and nowShredded coconut of this period was generally sold desiccated and unsweetened, drier and less sugary than the sweetened flake sold today, though nothing in the recipe states how the Larkin product was sold. If you use sweetened flake, consider cutting the custard sugar to about a third of a cup.
- Cooking the custardThe instructions are compressed. Scald the milk, slake the cornstarch in a little cold milk, whisk it with the sugar and egg, temper in the hot milk, then return everything to the pan and cook, stirring, until it thickens and boils for a full minute. Cornstarch must reach a boil to lose its raw taste and set properly.
- Let it coolAdd the coconut and vanilla off the heat and cool the custard completely, with a film of plastic wrap on the surface, before spreading. Warm custard slides off the layers and soaks them.
- Keeping itThis is a milk-and-egg filling, not a buttercream. The finished cake belongs in the refrigerator and is best within two days.
- YieldA three-layer cake serving 10 to 12.
Good Things to Eat came from the Larkin Company of Buffalo, a soap manufacturer that grew into one of the great American mail-order houses by selling household goods direct to customers, often through "Larkin Clubs" of neighbors who pooled orders in exchange for premiums. Cookbooks like this one were advertising: the recipes are genuine and workable, but each is written so that the shopping list runs through the Larkin catalogue. Coconut cake itself belongs to the late nineteenth-century vogue for desiccated coconut, which arrived in grocers' hands once processors began drying and shredding imported meat for shelf stability; before that, a cook wanting coconut cake cracked and grated the nut herself. A cornstarch custard between the layers, rather than plain frosting, is often described as the economical middle-class version of a filled cake, thickening cheap milk into something rich enough to carry the coconut.