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Cocoa-Nut Cake (To the well-beaten yolks)
To the well-beaten yolks of six eggs, add two cups powdered white sugar, three-fourths cups butter, one of sweet milk, three and a half of flour, one level tea-spoon soda and two of cream tartar, whites of four eggs well beaten; bake in jelly-cake pans. For icing, grate one cocoa-nut, beat whites of two eggs, and add one tea-cup powdered sugar; mix thoroughly with the grated cocoa-nut, and spread evenly on the layers of cake when they are cold.- Miss Nettie Miller, Columbus.
A straightforward creamed butter cake raised with soda and cream of tartar, baked in shallow rounds and stacked with an uncooked coconut meringue. Most of the work of translation is in the pans, the sugar and the coconut.
- OvenNo temperature is given because the book assumes a range you judge by hand. Bake thin layers at 350F, 18 to 25 minutes depending on pan size, until the centre springs back.
- Jelly-cake pansThese are shallow round tins, 8 or 9 inches across with sides about an inch high. This quantity of batter should fill roughly four of them; in modern 2-inch-deep cake pans you would get about three thicker layers and need longer baking.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term means granulated sugar ground fine, not today's confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. Use regular granulated in the cake batter; for the icing, modern confectioners' sugar works and behaves much as intended.
- Soda and cream of tartarOne level teaspoon soda with two of cream of tartar is homemade baking powder, roughly equivalent to four teaspoons of modern double-acting powder. It is single-acting, so the batter should go into the pans and the oven promptly once the flour is in.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabbered milk called for elsewhere in the book. Whole milk is the right choice.
- FlourThree and a half cups of what was probably a softer, lower-protein flour than today's. Modern all-purpose is stronger; measure by spooning and levelling rather than scooping, and expect a stiff batter that needs spreading in the pans.
- The coconutA whole nut is grated, meat and all, giving moist unsweetened shreds. Packaged sweetened flaked coconut is wetter and much sweeter; if you use it, cut the icing sugar back sharply. Unsweetened desiccated coconut is closer, but soften it in a little milk first.
- Raw egg white in the icingThe icing is never cooked. Two raw whites beaten with sugar and coconut carry the usual salmonella risk, which matters most for anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immune-compromised. Pasteurised whites or meringue powder give the same result without it.
- Leftover whitesSix yolks go into the batter but only four whites; two are held back for the icing, leaving none wasted. Fold the beaten whites into the finished batter last, gently.
- YieldFour thin layers, about twelve to sixteen slices. The icing quantity is modest and is meant to be spread between and over the layers, not to coat the sides.
The Dixie Cook-Book belongs to the great wave of American compiled community cookbooks of the 1880s, in which recipes arrive signed by the women who contributed them, as this one does from a Miss Nettie Miller of Columbus. Coconut cake was a mark of a well-supplied kitchen: whole coconuts reached inland cities by rail and steamship from the Caribbean through the second half of the century, and grating one by hand was tedious enough that the dish signalled effort as much as expense. Commercially shredded and packaged coconut only became common toward the end of the century, which is why the recipe assumes the cook starts with the nut itself. The leavening is also of its moment, sitting between the older soda-and-acid pairings and the ready-mixed baking powders that would soon displace them, and the layered form pressed into jelly-cake pans was the fashionable American alternative to the single deep loaf cake of earlier generations.