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Lemon Cocoanut Cream
Juice and grated rind 1 lemon 1 cup powdered sugar Yolks 2 eggs 1 cup shredded cocoanut Mix lemon juice and rind with sugar and yolks of eggs slightly beaten; cook ten minutes in double boiler, stirring constantly; then add cocoanut. Cool, and use as a filling for Corn-starch Cake, or any cake made from the whites of eggs.
A lemon curd stretched with coconut, meant for cakes that have used up their whites. It is a quick stovetop filling, and the only real risk is scrambling the yolks.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups once the coconut is stirred in, enough to fill a two-layer 8- or 9-inch cake or a single split layer. It thickens further as it cools.
- Powdered sugarIn this book "powdered sugar" means finely granulated sugar, not the cornstarch-laced confectioners' sugar sold today. Ordinary granulated sugar is the right substitute; confectioners' sugar will give a slightly starchy set.
- CocoanutShredded coconut here is unsweetened dried or freshly grated coconut. Modern sweetened flaked coconut will push the filling cloyingly sweet against the lemon, so reduce the sugar by a couple of tablespoons if that is all you have.
- The hinge: gentle heatKeep the water below a bare simmer and do not let it touch the upper pan. Yolks set from about 150F and curdle not far above 180F, so stir without pause and pull the pan the moment the mixture coats the spoon and holds a line.
- Ten minutes is a guideTime in a double boiler depends entirely on how hard the water is boiling. Judge by thickness, not the clock; an instant-read thermometer showing 170-175F is the surest signal.
- ZestGrate the rind before juicing, and take only the colored outer layer. One lemon gives roughly 3 tablespoons juice and a scant tablespoon of zest against a full cup of sugar, so the result is decidedly sweet.
- Cooling and keepingCool with the surface covered so no skin forms, and spread it cold or the cake layers will slide. Because it contains yolks, refrigerate the filled cake and eat it within two or three days.
- Cornstarch cakeThe cake it is paired with is a white cake made with beaten whites and part cornstarch for tenderness. Any angel food, white layer or sponge made from whites serves the same purpose: the filling exists to use the yolks that cake left over.
Cake fillings of this kind are a product of thrift in a period when eggs were separated constantly. A white cake or a meringue swallowed a good number of whites and left the yolks sitting in a bowl, and cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s answered with a whole family of yolk-based fillings, custards and "creams" printed near the recipes that created the surplus. Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, first published in 1896, is systematic about this pairing, and the closing line here points the reader straight back to the cake that supplies the whites. Shredded coconut was by then a cheap and fashionable pantry staple: commercially dried and packaged coconut is generally said to have become widely available in the United States toward the end of the nineteenth century, which may be why it turns up so freely in American cake work of the era while it seems much rarer in earlier English books.