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Cocoanut Gems
One cupful of butter, three cupfuls of flour, two cupfuls of sugar, one-half cupful of sweet milk, one grated cocoanut, two teaspoonfuls baking powder, four eggs; bake in gem pans.
A plain butter cake batter carrying a whole coconut, baked in individual tins. The original gives no temperature, time, or method, all of which have to be supplied.
- Gem pansCast-iron gem pans came in several sizes, commonly six to twelve small oval or round cups; a standard 12-cup muffin tin is the closest equivalent. Grease heavily, since the batter is rich but has no lining paper in the original scheme.
- OvenSmall rich cakes of this type want 350-375F. Expect 20-25 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean and the edges have pulled slightly from the tin.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh whole milk, specified to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk used in soda-risen batters. Since this recipe leavens with baking powder, ordinary milk is what is wanted.
- One grated cocoanutA mature coconut yields roughly 3 to 4 cups of freshly grated meat, moist and only faintly sweet. Substituting the same volume of packaged sweetened flaked coconut will make the gems markedly sweeter and drier; unsweetened desiccated coconut, about 2 cups, is nearer the mark.
- Method, unstatedCream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the flour sifted with the baking powder alternately with the milk, and fold in the coconut last. Mixing the coconut in early makes the batter difficult to portion evenly.
- A stiff batterThree cups of flour against half a cup of milk gives a thick, almost dropping batter rather than a pourable one. That is correct; spoon it into the cups two-thirds full.
- YieldAbout 24 gems from a standard muffin tin, two batches. Best eaten the day they are baked.
"Gems" were the American name for small cakes and quick breads baked in heavy cast-iron gem pans, which were heated in the oven before the batter went in so that each little cake got a crisp shell. The pans were a fixture of late nineteenth-century kitchens, sold in graniteware and iron, and cookbooks of the 1890s and 1900s carry gem recipes of many kinds, from Graham gems upward. Coconut belongs to the same moment: steam shipping and the trade out of the Caribbean had made whole nuts a reliable grocery item in northern cities, and grating one by hand was a routine if tedious kitchen job before packaged shredded coconut became widespread.