Cocoanut Cake
1/2 cup butter 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup shredded cocoanut 2 eggs 1/2 cup milk 1.3/4 cups flour 2 teaspoons baking powder Flavoring Beat the butter and sugar to a cream; add the cocoanut and eggs; then add the milk and sifted flour and baking powder. Flavor to taste; turn into a greased pan and bake in a moderate oven for about forty-five minutes.
A plain butter cake with coconut worked into the batter rather than piled on as frosting. The method is compressed to a single line, but it is a standard creaming cake and behaves like one.
- Oven temperatureA "moderate oven" is usually reckoned at about 350F (period sources range roughly 350-375F). Forty-five minutes suits a single deep pan; in two 8-inch layers check at 22-25 minutes.
- The coconutPackaged coconut of this period came both dry-desiccated and sweetened-moist, and the recipe does not say which is meant. If you use modern sweetened flaked coconut the cake will be noticeably sweeter and moister, so you may want to reduce the sugar by two tablespoons.
- FlavoringThe book assumes you know what to reach for: a teaspoon of vanilla, or half vanilla and half almond extract.
- Order of mixingAdd the eggs one at a time to the creamed butter and sugar and beat until smooth before the coconut goes in, then alternate the milk with the sifted dry ingredients. Mixing the coconut into the fat first, as written, is harmless but makes the batter harder to judge.
- Don't overbeat after the flourTwo teaspoons of baking powder to 1 3/4 cups flour is a normal amount of lift for a cake of this type. Stir only until the flour disappears or the crumb turns tough and the cake domes and cracks.
- Pan sizeThis is roughly a two-egg cake batter: one 8- or 9-inch square pan, one 8-inch round about 2 inches deep, or a small loaf. A 9x13 will bake thin and dry in far less time.
- YieldAbout eight to ten servings. It is a workaday cake meant to be eaten plainly or with a boiled white icing and more coconut pressed onto it.
Coconut arrived in American home baking as a shelf-stable convenience: by the 1890s desiccated and shredded coconut was generally sold packaged in tins and boxes, which spared cooks the work of cracking, draining and grating a whole nut, a job earlier cookbooks describe at length. That is why a cake like this can list "1/2 cup shredded cocoanut" as casually as it lists sugar. The proportions are the familiar ones, half a cup of butter, a cup of sugar, two eggs, and then whatever flavoring the family favored, coconut, chocolate, spice or citrus. The instructions assume a cook who already knows the creaming method and needs only the proportions.