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Cocoanut Sandwich No. 2
Roll out one-half pound of puff paste until onefourth of an inch thick, then place it in a baking tin and bake in a hot oven until a golden brown; when done, let it get cold; whip one-half pint of cream to a stiff dry froth, add to it three tablespoonfuls each of powdered white sugar and desiccated cocoanut. Cut the pastry into strips three inches long by one inch wide; spread some of the cocoanut cream on each piece, put two pieces together and sprinkle powdered white sugar thickly over them.
A tea-table pastry rather than a sandwich in the lunchbox sense: crisp puff paste layered with sweetened coconut cream. The whole thing hinges on assembling at the last moment.
- Assemble just before servingCream-filled pastry softens within the hour. Bake and fill the same day, and put the halves together only as the plate goes out.
- "Hot oven"425-450F. Puff paste needs the initial blast to turn its water to steam and lift the layers; a moderate oven leaks butter and gives a flat, greasy sheet.
- Half a pound of puff pasteRoughly one sheet from a 17.3 oz supermarket box, thawed. All-butter puff is closer to the original than shortening-based versions.
- Keep the sheet flatThe recipe wants strips that stack neatly, so dock the rolled paste with a fork and bake it under a second tin or a wire rack, otherwise it domes and will not cut square.
- Half a pint of creamOne cup of heavy or whipping cream in US measure, which whips up to about two cups. "A stiff dry froth" means beaten to stiff peaks, firm enough to hold a cut edge but not turned grainy.
- Desiccated cocoanutUnsweetened fine-shredded dried coconut, not the moist sweetened flakes sold for cake decorating. Sweetened flake will make the filling cloying and the shreds are too long to spread smoothly.
- Powdered white sugarIn this period this generally means finely ground granulated sugar, near modern superfine or caster. Confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch works in the cream but dulls the finish on top; superfine keeps some sparkle.
- YieldHalf a pound of pastry cut into 3 by 1 inch strips gives roughly a dozen filled sandwiches, with some cream left over.
"Sandwich" in turn-of-the-century American cookery covered a good deal more ground than two slices of bread: the term stretched to any pair of thin somethings with a filling between them, which is how a pastry-and-whipped-cream confection ends up in the sweet section of a sandwich book. Books of this kind were often aimed at afternoon teas and card-party suppers, where a plate wanted variety and a small, tidy shape more than it wanted substance, though nothing here identifies the intended audience. The spelling "cocoanut" was common through the nineteenth century and only gradually gave way to "coconut"; commercial drying and shredding operations made desiccated coconut cheap and shelf-stable in America in the last decades of the 1800s, which is why coconut turns up so insistently in cakes, pies and fillings of this era.