Coconut Cake, Top of the List, Almost

 

No, we haven't had snow yet. I made this coconut cake when we had a beautiful snowfall on January 3, 2022 because it just didn't get made before Christmas of 2021.

But I'm thinking back to November of 2020--you remember that year, don't you? The year the world shut down and many of us had Thanksgiving in our house, alone?

That November I started watching every new Hallmark Christmas movie premier. Religiously. It had been that kind of a year.

 

I even kept a pen and notebook nearby and titled a list--"What Hallmark Movies Taught Me About Christmas."

Top of the list was...Baking is good!

Fruitcake is top of my baking list (my White Fruitcake with no citron posted here "Stir Up Sunday") 

Coconut Cake is not far behind. 

 One of my favorite childhood Christmas memories is of Mama making her Coconut Cake with lemon filling on Christmas Eve and it being refrigerated overnight and eaten cold on Christmas Day.

It was a serious project requiring Daddy's help in poking an ice pick into the eyes of the fresh coconut to save the coconut water to pour over the warm cake layers, tediously removing the shell from the meat, and finally grating the coconut meat, sometimes resulting in scraped knuckles. 

 

It was a cake straight from heaven!

Foolishly neglecting to secure Mama's recipe before she left us for her heavenly home, I've tried several recipes. One was very good and also very time consuming:

See my post Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal here!

I finally found a recipe that was very close to Mama's in Eugene Walters, American Cooking: Southern Style, a Time Life book and a fascinating history of Southern cooking.

I have four cookbooks from the Alabama author, who I "met" through Pat Conroy's cookbook. He taught me never to use the black dust that you put in salt and pepper shakers, that the essential oils in peppercorns help with digestion when freshly ground. Although RH still demands his black dust.

I wish I could link to Mr. Walter's recipe for Coconut Cake with Lemon Filling but it's not online. I will link to a recipe I substituted for his frosting recipe that required me to boil to 239 degrees. I found one at addapinch.com. It was delicious even though not like Mama's. Maybe hers was whipped cream based?  But I did make Eugene's recipe for cake instead of the one at add a pinch--those 8 eggs separated won me over--and I am going to put his recipe for lemon filling at the bottom of the post because it's become my foolproof go-to recipe for that. 

 

Full Disclaimer: I did not buy a fresh coconut and poke out his eyes! Despite using Baker's coconut flakes the frosting was excellent. It was one of those times when we didn't see any family to share my baking with so eventually the remains went to the birds. 

 

Take my word for it, RH had hardly turned around and all our resident crows and bluejays were fighting over their dessert of the day. 

Eugene Walters Lemon Filling:

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 cup cornstarch

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 tablespoons butter, cut into 1/4 inch bits

2 tablespoons finely grated fresh lemon peel

2/3 cup strained fresh lemon juice [I did not strain it]

1 cup water

Combine the sugar, cornstarch, salt and 2 beaten eggs in a heavy 2 quart saucepan and mix well with a wire whisk or wooden spoon. Stir in the butter bits, lemon peel, lemon juice, and water. When all ingredients are well blended, set pan over high heat.

Stirring the filling mixture constantly, bring to a boil over high heat. Immediately reduce heat to low and continue to stir until the filling is smooth and thick enough to coat the spoon heavily. Scrape the filling into a bowl with a spatula, and let it cool to room temperature.

What's top of your baking list for Christmas?

 

 

 

 

 

Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal

If there is one cookbook that changed my life more than any other, it is Tamar Adler's 2011 book, An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace.

Tamar unequivocally says that An Everlasting Meal is not a cookbook but rather "a book about eating affordably, responsibly, and well."

It is a book of essays much like M. F. K. Fisher's classic How to Cook a Wolf, and Adler models her book after Fisher's. In the chapter called "How to Catch Your Tail" she taught me that even though I frugally save the roasted chicken carcass to make my own chicken broth, and meat scraps to make beef broth, I had not even thought about saving "tails." 

Tails, the intensely flavored drippings in the bottom of the pan that can be saved to flavor rice. Other tails: the oils left from dried tomatoes or anchovies, the stems of any fresh herb, shrimp shells, fish bones, citrus peels, so many things I threw away that have many uses to enhance food flavors.

Her chapter on How to Feel Powerful? How to Make Peace, How to Live Well, How to Light a Room, How to Weather a Storm. All amazing chapters!

But my very favorite chapter of the entire book, one that alone was worth the price of the book, is titled: 

"How to Build a Ship"

How do you build a ship? Adler lets Antoine de Saint-Exupery answer this question:

"If you want to build a ship,

don't drum up people to collect wood,

and don't assign them tasks and work,

but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

And dear friends, those of you who sometimes wonder how you're going to get excited about cooking one more meal…

How do you fall in love with cooking again?

How does Tamar Adler answer this question? She says:

"My answer is to anchor food to somewhere deep inside you,

or deep in your past,

or deep in the wonders of what you love."

After reading this chapter I reached far back in my memory and wondered…

What foods or meals tasted better than anything?

My mother's cold coconut cake!

And I do not have her recipe, do not. I tried this one, Coconut-Cream Cake from LUNA in Spokane, Washington. I had clipped it from Bon Appetit magazine (but could not find it in their archives to link to it for you).  It was an all day deal for slowpoke me with a Coconut-Custard Filling to make and chill for 3 hours, the Buttercream frosting to make the base for and chill for 2 hours before completing the steps when ready to frost the cake--and I should have doubled the frosting--and the cake itself to be baked, cooled, split in halves, and then frozen, yes frozen, for 1 hour before assembling the cake.

And it was not like my mother's. Hers must have had a whipped cream frosting. This cake was, still is, delicious, but not as swooningly marvelous as my mother's coconut cake.

So what next? My next memory of the best tasting meal I ever had as a child was eaten once a year. Not Thanksgiving Day meal. It was eaten at Lee's Inlet Kitchen in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. We vacationed each summer while I was growing up in Myrtle Beach, SC, rented a cottage, and Mama, along with any aunts visiting that year, cooked all our meals.

But one night each year we always drove to Murrells Inlet and ate at Lee's Kitchen. I remember the big platters of seafood my father and uncle always ordered but I can still taste the fried shrimp plate I always ordered, year after year. 

I found out that Lee's Inlet Kitchen is still there, still owned by the same family since 1948. Here's a link to it in case you ever are near. I can still remember sitting there with sunburned arms and biting through the crispy crust to that juicy South Carolina shrimp!

I have 52 other things on my How to Build a Ship list of memorable delicious foods now to consult when I want to cry at the thought of cooking one more meal, but I think good fried shrimp has got to come soon.

[Spode's Albion Ships pattern. I only have 3 of them.]

Tell me now, please,

what is one of the most memorable

meals or dish that you would love to eat soon?