1800 to 1869 Cake #6

Coconut Layer Cake

In the early 1800's, coconut cakes were baked wherever Caribbean "cocoa nuts" arrived. Large port towns such as Philadelphia and others along the Atlantic, as well as places along the Gulf like New Orleans were only a few days away from a new shipment of coconuts coming in. Due to their durability, coconuts were good travelers. A pastry chef, from Charleston, named Catherine Joor, had 400 pounds of coconuts in her possession at the time of her death in 1773. By the mid 1830's coconut was being used in fruitcakes, sponge cakes, and pound cakes.

This cake was a son of a gun for me to get through. The recipe calls for unsweetened shredded coconut. I had no idea it would be so difficult to find. All of the big grocery store chains only carry the sweetened kind, so I drove 30 minutes to Trader Joe's and they were out. Arggh! I finally found some and got to work on the cake. The cake was easy to make, but then it called for a special frosting called Seven-minute Frosting. It requires using a double boiler and constant beating for seven minutes straight. At the time, I didn't have a hand mixer (I went and bought one right after this) so I did it by hand. Whisking by hand as fast as you can for seven minutes is harder than it sounds:) I do believe that the frosting would have been stiffer and more set if it had been beaten more efficiently.

Despite some of the frustrations in the process of making this cake, it still looked pretty good and it was pretty tasty. Most people love or hate coconut, I tend to not care for it, but for some reason I really liked this cake. Maybe the unsweetened coconut had something to do with it or maybe the laborious frosting was worth it. Whatever it was, everyone liked this cake and it is understandable as to why coconut was so popular when it made it's arrival in America's kitchen.