Why Bother with Fresh Coconut on Classic Coconut Cake?

My husband’s Aunt Mary R., now she was a cook. I say was because even though she’s still living, she is not able to cook for herself anymore. But the great passion of her life—in addition to the husband she lost in the Korean War and never found—was cooking for family. I got the impression sitting down to her groaning table that she was the happiest when feeding a huge meal to others—frequently using her best dishes.

Aunt Mary with oldest daughter, Michelle.

I thought of her this past weekend as I made a coconut cake for a family reunion and recalled the time she drove from Montgomery, Alabama to visit us here in Virginia, all by herself and probably in her high seventies. She came with the goal of making several of her brother’s (my husband’s father, Hershal) special favorites including a barbecue sauce for pork, and a coconut cake. I wish I could say co-co-nut cake the way she does in her deep Alabama drawl.

She stayed with us that fall and attended the kids’ homecoming parade and we made more than one stop at grocery stores hunting for the exact brand name of ingredients so she could make everything “just like mamma made.”

So for her coconut cake, she had to use a real coconut—never mind the work. I had never opened one before her visit, and until last Saturday, had never opened one since. But after I wrote (here) about making Mary Emma Showalter’s coconut cake (of Mennonite Community Cookbook fame), another Mary V. (hang on to your hats, this story is filled with Marys. Mary V., my husband’s cousin on his mother’s side), pounced on that post and proclaimed I had to make it for the family’s summer picnic. I squirmed, not anxious to repeat the three layer huge cake and Mary Emma’s arduous mixing process. I reminded Mary V. that it might go better for the Christmas get together but she hinted that ever since the older aunts stopped baking—and have all now passed on—the reunion had been missing its coconut cake. I told my husband what I was planning and he flinched only slightly: he wasn’t going to get one of my reunion mainstays, Arnold Felcher cake.

Finally I resolved to make the cake, but to look for another recipe and use freshly grated coconut. Might as well get the real “foodie” thing going: drill the hole; drain the milk; break open the coconut (not easy either); separate the coconut meat from the shell (ugh); scrape the brown liner off the white meat; and THEN grate the pieces into fine fluffy coconut.

(Video help here.)

All of that took un-expert-me hours all by my lonely self (husband working), when I could have just opened a bag. But I was determined.

So it wasn’t until I had gotten to the last step of slowly making my pile of fluffy grated coconut that I decided to sit down for the job. I flashed back 20 or so years to Aunt Mary’s visit and recalled how she had sat in my kitchen at the table grating that coconut while I went about my other chores. Suddenly she was with me in the kitchen—not in Aunt Mary’s charismatic religious way of visions and prophecies—but her love and spirit of pouring out her life for her family.

Each coconut has a face. Did you know? The facial features are the best places to make a hole.

I reflected on how this was probably going to be the last time I would use a real coconut, grating and all, and how for anyone to do this on a regular basis—it would be a labor of love.

The other truth that also hit me was that her making that cake was a true toil of love for her only living brother, for the memories of their mother, for family. Their family relationships were complicated to be sure—(aren’t most?)—but down beneath the connections ran deep.

The things we do for love and family. Now coconut—fresh or otherwise—seems to be something you either enjoy or you don’t. As some of us enjoyed the reunion cake, my sister-in-law Barbara said what it made her think of was grating coconut at Christmas as a family; her father would always drill the hole and dig it out of the shell and they’d all help grate and enjoy the fluffy stuff.

All that to say, here’s a recipe that was easy and turned out perfectly. The nutty flavor of fresh coconut was a treat—and my husband and I enjoyed the cake even more a day later when we could eat it with a dollop of ice cream. But on this we agreed: we both like Arnold Felcher’s Cake a tad better!

And if one of my grandkids develops a taste for real homemade fresh coconut cake, they might get me to do it again. Especially if they help.

Coconut Cake

Adapted from recipe by Esther B. Rodes, (correct spelling) McGaheysville, Va. in Mennonite Recipes from the Shenandoah Valley, Good Books.

1 ½ cups sugar
2 cups flour
3 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup shortening
1 cup milk (or substitute in enough “milk” from the coconut to make one cup)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon coconut flavoring (or milk from the coconut)
6 egg whites
12-ounce container whipped topping
1 ½ cups freshly grated or frozen coconut

1. Mix together sugar, flour, baking powder, and salt.
2. Add shortening, milk, vanilla and flavoring. Beat for 3 minutes with mixer.
3. Add egg whites and beat on high speed for another 3 minutes.
4. Pour into 2 greased and floured 8 or 9-inch round pans. Bake at 360 degrees for 30-40 minutes.
5. Remove from oven. Let rest for 5 minutes. Remove from pans and place on cooking racks. Before cake is completely cooled, place cake layers in airtight containers to retain moisture. (MD note: I always freeze my layer cakes before frosting them, makes the layers so much easier to handle and I think it improves moisture content too.)
6. When completely cooled, spread whipped topping over bottom layer. Sprinkle with coconut. Place top layer on cake and spread with whipped topping. Add remaining coconut. Refrigerate. The cake is best if refrigerated for at least 6 hours to firm topping.

Serves 12-16.

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What stories from your own family does this bring to mind?

What dish or dishes do you make “for love” of family?

Do you have a favorite coconut cake recipe you recommend?

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Find Mennonite Recipes from the Shenandoah Valley here.

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Another wonderful and now-classic Mennonite Shenandoah Valley cookbook is the 600+ page Mennonite Country-Style Recipes and Kitchen Secrets : The Prize Collection of a Shenandoah Valley Cook by Esther Shank, who also wrote an endorsement for my cookbook, Whatever Happened to Dinner.