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Cocoanut Sponge Cake
ingredients-One teacupful of granulated sugar, two teacupfuls of flour, a tiny pinch of salt, two ounces of butter, three eggs, a large teaspoonful of baking powder, a little dessicated cocoanut and jam.
Method-Whisk the eggs to a cream in a large basin. Cream the butter and add it to the eggs, also the sugar and salt and whisk for five minutes; then gradually stir in the flour and lastly the baking powder.
Grease two cake tins, put in each a thin layer of the mixture and bake for fifteen minutes in a moderate oven.
When the cakes are nicely set remove from the oven and take out of tins and place on a sieve to cool.
Spread with jam and press together and scatter cocoanut over the top; then cut up into fingers, diamond shapes, etc.
A plain layered sponge assembled as small cut fingers rather than a round cake. The method is workable, but two things in the original need attention before you start: the cup size and the near-total absence of liquid.
- TeacupfulAn Edwardian teacup is smaller than a US measuring cup, generally taken as 6 fl oz. Read this as about 3/4 cup sugar and 1 1/2 cups flour (roughly 6 1/2 oz), which brings the proportions much closer to a workable batter.
- The batter will be stiffThere is no milk or water anywhere in the list, and three eggs may not be enough to bring 1 1/2 cups of flour to a spreadable consistency. If it is too stiff to spread thinly, add milk a tablespoon at a time until the mixture drops reluctantly from the spoon. Too dry and the thin layers bake to biscuit.
- Moderate oven350F. Two shallow tins of thin batter will be set in 12-15 minutes, so check at 12; these layers are thin enough to dry out fast.
- TinsTwo matching shallow tins, say 8-inch round or square, greased as directed (lining with parchment does no harm). The recipe asks for a thin layer in each, so expect shallow layers rather than a full sandwich cake.
- Baking powder timingThe recipe stirs the baking powder in last; keep to that order, do not whisk after it goes in, and get the tins into the oven promptly.
- Desiccated cocoanutModern desiccated coconut is fine, but buy unsweetened and fine-shredded. Sweetened flaked coconut sits too wetly on the jam and makes the fingers difficult to cut cleanly.
- Assembling and cuttingCooling on a sieve or wire rack is the right call, and the cakes must be fully cold before the jam goes on. Use a firm jam, press gently, then chill 20 minutes before cutting so the slices hold their shape.
- YieldTwo 8-inch layers sandwiched give roughly 24 fingers or diamonds.
The technique here is the plain butter sponge of the British and American home baker, and the finished article, cut into fingers and diamonds and dusted with coconut, belongs to the tea-table rather than the dinner table. Desiccated coconut is some guide to period: shredded and dried coconut became a cheap, shelf-stable grocery item in the later nineteenth century, and cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s use it freely as a decorative finish where an earlier book would have called for grated fresh nut or nothing at all.