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Cocoa-Nut Cake (One cup butter three of sugar)
One cup butter, three of sugar, one of sweet milk, four and a half of flour, four eggs with whites beaten to a stiff froth, a teaspoon soda, two of cream tartar, one grated cocoa-nut. -Mrs. J. Holland,
A large butter cake of the sort written down for cooks who already knew the method — no pan, no oven, no time. What follows fills in what Mrs. Holland assumed.
- Read the egg line carefully"Four eggs with whites beaten to a stiff froth" means separate the four eggs, beat the yolks into the creamed butter and sugar, and fold the whipped whites in last, after the flour. It does not mean whites only.
- Cream, then alternateCream the butter and sugar until pale, add yolks, then add the flour (sifted with the soda and cream of tartar) alternately with the milk. Folding in the whites at the end is what keeps a cake this heavy from being dense.
- The leavening is homemade baking powderOne teaspoon soda plus two of cream of tartar is a common nineteenth-century substitute for baking powder, in roughly the usual 1:2 ratio. If you prefer, use about 4 teaspoons of double-acting baking powder and leave both out. Sift it thoroughly through the flour; unmixed soda can leave dark streaks and a soapy taste.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh unsoured milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabbered milk used with soda alone. Whole milk.
- One grated cocoa-nutA mature brown coconut yields roughly 3 to 4 cups grated. Frozen grated coconut can be substituted by weight; dried or desiccated coconut is much more concentrated, so match it by volume rather than weight and soak it in a few tablespoons of the milk first. Sweetened flake will push an already sugary cake over the edge.
- Cup sizesThe Dixie cup is close enough to 8 fl oz for practical purposes, but the flour is unsifted and measured by scoop. Weigh it: 4 1/2 cups is about 20 oz / 565 g. Three cups sugar is about 21 oz, one cup butter 8 oz — a very rich, very large batter.
- Pans and ovenThis is enough for two 9-inch layers plus a small loaf, or a large tube pan. The recipe gives no oven guidance at all; 350F works -- about 30 to 35 minutes for layers, 60 to 70 for a tube pan, until a skewer comes out clean.
- FinishingCoconut cakes of this era were often finished with a boiled or plain confectioners' icing and more grated coconut, though this recipe says nothing about icing.
- YieldSixteen to twenty servings. Coconut keeps the crumb moist for three or four days under a cover.
Coconut cake became a Southern showpiece in the decades after the Civil War, when trade between the Caribbean and Gulf and Atlantic ports made whole coconuts a reliable, if still slightly special, grocery — cheap enough for a Sunday cake, exotic enough to be worth naming in the title. The Dixie Cook-Book (1883) gathered contributions like this one from named housekeepers, and Mrs. Holland's entry is typical of the genre: a bare list of proportions, because the cook reading it had made a dozen butter cakes and needed only the ratios. The soda-and-cream-of-tartar pairing dates the recipe as much as the coconut does; commercial baking powder existed by the 1880s, but this cook was still working from the two separate tins.