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Cocoanut Buns
Ingredients.
Three-quarters of a pound of Prepared Flour.* Quarter of a pound of Cocoanut.
Quarter of a pound of White Sugar.
Three ounces of Butter.
This entry is a bare ingredient list in the abbreviated style common to late-Victorian cookery manuals, where the method for a whole class of small cakes was given once and then assumed. Anything not stated here has to be supplied from that context.
- The missing methodNo liquid, no mixing and no baking directions are given, so the page cannot be followed literally. A mixture of this kind would normally be handled by rubbing the butter into the flour, stirring in the sugar and coconut, and binding to a stiff dough with egg and a little milk before baking, but none of that is stated here and the binding liquid is a matter of guesswork.
- Prepared flourThe asterisk refers to a note elsewhere in the book; "prepared flour" of this period generally means plain flour sifted with a raising agent, though the exact proportion is not given here. Modern self-raising flour is the nearest equivalent, so 12 oz (about 340 g) of it replaces the three-quarters of a pound.
- CocoanutHere this means desiccated coconut, dry and finely shredded, not the sweetened moist flakes sold today. Sweetened flake will push the buns over into cloying; use unsweetened desiccated, 4 oz or about 115 g.
- White sugarProbably caster rather than granulated, since finer sugar dissolves into a rubbed-in mixture without leaving grit, though the book specifies only "white". Quarter of a pound is 4 oz, about 115 g, and three ounces of butter is roughly 85 g.
- OvenNo baking instruction is given. As a modern starting point, buns of this kind can be baked at 400F (200C) for 12 to 15 minutes. Coconut scorches before the crumb dries out, so watch the tops rather than the clock.
- YieldThe quantities should make roughly a dozen small buns, smaller than a modern bakery bun. They are best eaten the day they are made.
Desiccated coconut arrived in British kitchens in quantity in the later nineteenth century, once Ceylon and Malayan mills began drying and shredding the meat for export, and it moved fast from a novelty to a staple of the cheap sweet bakery: coconut buns, coconut rocks, coconut ice, macaroons. It kept in a tin for months and bulked out a mixture without the cost of the ground almonds it often stood in for. The spelling "cocoanut", usual in English books until well into the twentieth century, is generally explained as a confusion with cocoa; the two are unrelated.