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White Cocoanut Cookies and Small Cakes
Make the cake mixture number 15 and add grated or desiccated cocoanut to it. Roll out with a little more flour and cut small cookies. Sugar over the tops before baking. The same may also be baked in muffin rings and iced on top with cocoanut mixed in the icing.
This is a variation instruction rather than a standalone formula: it depends on a base dough given elsewhere in the book, and assumes a bakeshop's habits about rolling, cutting and finishing.
- The base mixtureThe cross-reference to cake mixture number 15 is what the printed page gives, and our text now matches it. That mixture appears elsewhere in the book rather than on this page; since the dough is rolled out and cut, any firm rolled sugar-cookie dough will stand in.
- Cocoanut quantityNone is given. As a modern starting point, roughly 1 to 1½ cups desiccated coconut to a dough made with 4 cups flour works; much more and the dough tends to tear when rolled rather than cutting cleanly.
- Desiccated vs. freshPeriod desiccated coconut was unsweetened and quite dry, closer to today's macaroon or fine-shred unsweetened coconut than to the moist sweetened flake sold in bags. Sweetened flake will brown faster and make the cookies noticeably sweeter.
- "A little more flour"The added coconut carries moisture and fat, so the dough slackens. Chill it firm before rolling instead of working in much extra flour, which toughens the cookie.
- OvenNo oven heat or time is given. Small rolled cookies of this kind bake well at a modern 375°F for about 8 to 10 minutes, until the edges and the exposed coconut are just coloured; coconut scorches before the dough is done at higher heat.
- Sugaring the topsA light brush of milk, water or egg wash first helps the sugar hold. Granulated or coarse sugar is the likely intention, rather than powdered.
- Muffin ringsThese are bottomless metal rings set on a flat baking sheet. A standard muffin pan works as a substitute; fill two-thirds and allow roughly 15 to 18 minutes at 375°F, and ice only after they are fully cold, as the recipe directs icing on top.
- YieldDepends entirely on the substitute dough chosen, since the base is not given here; a dough made with about 4 cups flour, cut small, would give roughly four to five dozen cookies.
"Cocoanut" is generally said to have been the standard nineteenth-century spelling, formed on the assumption that the word belonged with cocoa, and it persisted in American trade books long after the botanical distinction was clear. Desiccated coconut turned up in American bakeshops in commercial quantity in the later 1800s, commercial desiccation in the United States being associated chiefly with Philadelphia operations from the 1890s; before that a baker had to crack and grate the nuts by hand. The instruction here is a single paragraph hanging off a numbered base dough that could be spun into several counter items, cookies one day and iced small cakes the next, with no additional formula to memorise.