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Coconut Filling
1/2 cup milk 1 1/2 cups shredded coconut 2 egg-whites 4 tablespoons confectioners' sugar Warm the milk, pour it over the coconut and soak until well softened, usually one-half hour. Beat the egg-whites stiff and add the sugar gradually. Spread a thin coating of the egg and sugar mixture on the layer, then spread a covering of the moistened coconut. To what is left of the filling, add enough confectioners' sugar to thicken, stir in the remaining coconut and spread the mixture thickly over the top. Sprinkle the whole cake with dry coconut.
A layer-cake filling from the era when raw egg white was standard in uncooked frostings. The coconut and sugar work is straightforward; the egg white is the problem.
- Why the cautionThe egg whites are beaten with sugar and spread on a finished cake with no cooking at any stage, and no hot syrup, acid or alcohol to intervene. Raw shell egg carries a Salmonella risk that this method never addresses, and the filled cake then sits at room temperature, which favours any bacteria present. Use a current recipe for a cooked or boiled-syrup coconut frosting instead.
- The milk is also uncookedThe recipe says only to warm the half cup enough to soften the coconut, and gives no temperature, so it may well not reach a pasteurising heat. It then stays wet in the filling between the layers.
- Coconut then and now"Shredded coconut" in books of this period may mean unsweetened moist or dry shred rather than the heavily sweetened flake sold in most supermarkets today, though sweetened packaged coconut was also available. Sweetened flake will not absorb the milk the same way and shifts the sugar balance.
- Confectioners' sugarIcing sugar, generally with a little starch added. The four tablespoons beaten into the whites are specified; it is the later addition, to what is left of the filling, that is unmeasured -- "enough to thicken."