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Cocoanut Cakes
8 ounces flour 3 ounces butter 1 1/2 ounces sugar 4 ounces cocoanut desiccated 2 teaspoons baking powder Whites of 3 eggs Mix the flour and butter together; then add the sugar, cocoanut and baking powder. Whisk the eggs to a stiff froth, and mix with the other ingredients thoroughly for a few minutes, then drop about a tablespoonful in little heaps on the oven shelf or baking sheet, and bake in a moderate oven for fifteen minutes. One-half a teaspoon of vanilla gives these cakes a delicate flavor and should be added at the same time as the egg to the other ingredients.
A plain rubbed-in biscuit dough lightened with whisked whites, given in weights as English-influenced books of the period usually were. Converted and clarified, it works exactly as written.
- The weights in cups8 oz flour is about 1 3/4 cups; 3 oz butter is 6 tablespoons; 1 1/2 oz sugar is a scant 3 1/2 tablespoons; 4 oz desiccated coconut is roughly 1 1/3 cups. Weighing is more reliable here, since coconut varies wildly in how it packs.
- Moderate ovenConventionally taken as somewhere around 350F, though the book gives no temperature. Fifteen minutes is right for tablespoon-sized heaps; take them out when the edges and the coconut shreds have coloured but the centres are still pale.
- Desiccated cocoanutThis means unsweetened, finely shredded, dried coconut, not the moist sweetened flake sold in bags today. Sweetened flake will make the cakes cloying and cause them to spread and scorch; look for unsweetened desiccated or macaroon coconut.
- The sugar is deliberately lowAn ounce and a half of sugar to twelve ounces of flour and coconut gives a dry, biscuit-like cake meant for tea rather than a dessert cookie. If you want them sweeter, the coconut will carry another ounce without upsetting the texture.
- Mixing the flour and butterRub the cold butter into the flour with the fingertips until it looks like coarse meal before anything else goes in. This is the only fat and the only liquid distribution the dough gets, so a proper rub-in decides the crumb.
- Folding the whitesThree stiffly whisked whites are all the moisture in the mixture, so the dough will look dry and crumbly at first. Fold and press rather than beat, and stop as soon as it coheres; "a few minutes" of mixing will knock most of the air out.
- The oven shelfThe recipe's own wording allows the heaps to go straight onto the oven shelf, which would have needed greasing or flouring. Use a baking sheet lined with parchment; the coconut catches quickly on bare metal.
- YieldSomething over twenty cakes at a tablespoon each. They keep well for several days in a tin and firm up considerably as they cool.
The "cocoanut" spelling was common in English and American cookbooks well into the twentieth century. Desiccated coconut was an industrial product of the later nineteenth century, shipped dried and shredded from Ceylon and the West Indies, and its cheapness put coconut cakes and macaroons within reach of ordinary households that would never have cracked a whole nut.