Cocoanut Puffs (1913)

Let's celebrate 'the' trendy ingredient of 100 years ago.

We take it for granted now, but in the early 1900s coconut (or ‘cocoanut’ as it was most often spelled at that time) was quite the chic ingredient. According to Megan Roosevelt’s Coconut: Superfoods for Life, the first real use in cooking in the United States came in 1895 when Franklin Baker, a flour miller in Philadelphia, got a shipment of coconuts from Cuba to pay a debt. Baker had no luck selling them 'as-is,' so he decided to use his milling skills and ended up with a lot of shredded coconut meat. He marketed it as a fancy new ingredient and within the span of ten years, coconut hit the baking big-time.

It’s easy to see why. At the time, coconut was exotic and unique, yet sweet and with an almost creamy chewiness. While today coconut is thought of as an ingredient mostly for ‘heavy’ pastries, treats, and cookies, our 'foremother' home bakers really experimented with it. For cookies whose excitement had previously come mainly from the addition of dried fruits and nuts, coconut added a textured elegance.

Most often, coconut is used in combination with other flavors – chocolate, banana, citrus, caramel – but in our recipe today, coconut is the star.

Cocoanut Puffs (1913)

From The American Home Cook Book: A Volume of Tested Recipes by Grace E. Denison

Ingredients:

The whites of 3 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 tablespoon cornstarch

Vanilla

Cocoanut enough to make stiff

Beat whites of eggs very light and stiff, add sugar and cornstarch dissolved in a very little water and stirred into the eggs and sugar.

Put on a double boiler and cook over water (boiling) for about twenty or twenty-five minutes. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking.

Then add cocoanut enough to stand up well when dropped on buttered tins. It takes one-half a pound or a little more for this recipe.

Flavor with vanilla and drop on tins, and bake for eight to ten minutes in a moderate oven.

Challenges and Changes

Ms. Denison subtitles her cook book ‘A Volume of Tested Recipes’ and I’m so glad she tested them. The recipe works very well as long as one reads ahead and translates a few components.

As happens with many old recipes, the steps are a tad out of order and worded oddly. One needs to first dissolve the cornstarch, and then mix the beaten egg whites and sugar, and then add the dissolved cornstarch to get things into the right order at the start. As for the ‘moderate’ oven, I used 350 degrees, and for the ‘eight to ten’ minutes, I started with eight but then left the cookies in for a total of nine.

For the double-boiler, as I was using a metal bowl to beat the egg whites I just went ahead and used it for the mixture and then set it over a pan of boiling water. It worked fine and I didn't have to clean an extra pan.

Ms. Denison recommends ‘one-half a pound or a little more’ coconut and I did probably about 10 ounces.

The cookies came out with nice browned edges, and I had to let them cool completely before attempting to remove them from the pans. The cookies did stick a bit despite the tin-buttering, but with a thin metal spatula they released fairly well without much damage.

The Ratings

Cookie Appearance: 8

Cookie Texture: 7.5

Cookie Mouthfeel: 8

Cookie Flavor: 8.5

Overall Cookie Rating: 8.3

The cocoanut puffs were a hit! I had worried that a mostly-coconut cookie wouldn't go over well. BUT, raters mentioned that even though they usually weren't wild about coconut in and of itself, they loved these puffs! One commenter remarked that they had 'satisfyingly crunchy outer layers with soft creamy insides.' Another rater suggested making them smaller, and perhaps adding a little chocolate as a drizzle, or mixing with some nuts. Both are great suggestions. I would advise trying them as-is first, and then letting your imagination take over - just as our early 1900s foremothers did.

Next week’s recipe: Cry Babies (1932)