Andrew's Wiki
Coconut Loaf
Although we still love our scones, I felt that we needed a change of pace, so as not to grow tired of the scones. The last breakfast loaf we ate was Andrew’s mother’s banana chocolate chip bread, so we need a different one before going back to that trustworthy loaf. (Plus, we don’t want to wait a few days, up to a week, waiting for bananas to get mushy enough. We want breakfast now.) Pumpkin bread doesn’t feel in season, even though the recent cold spell and rain showers really tempt me to make it. We’d rather have carrot cake than a carrot loaf, and Andrew doesn’t like zucchini bread. I don’t have any walnut oil to make a proper walnut spice loaf, and plus, that’s also more autumnal than August can really support.
I started thinking about pound cakes: I could take a cake recipe and put it in two loaf pans, after adjustments to make it more loaf-like in texture and flavor. But what flavor? At Wegman’s, I saw some skinned coconuts (how would you say it other than “skinned?” “Shelled?”) that reminded me of the Coconut Silver Cake I baked for a class last winter. It was an historical recipe from Lafcadio Hearn’s 1885 Creole cookbook (who knew he’d publish a cookbook?!) I had cooked it to demonstrate what I described as the gastronomic diaspora: not only people and languages, but also ingredients and cooking techniques moved from colonies and foreign trading posts (the “periphery”) into the “center,” ie, Europe and America. This cake demonstrated that a tropical ingredient was adapted by mainland Americans for a new hybrid cuisine.
Anyway, I felt tempted to resurrect that recipe (it’s filed among the research papers and seminar notes of that class!), but Andrew demurred, calling that recipe too dense. And he’s right: as a dessert, you could lighten it with some whipped cream or creme anglaise, but as a breakfast food, it would sink like a stone into your poor, unsuspecting, still-drowsy gastrointestinal system.
As usual, I retreated to Epicurious from some ideas: That last one looked like a winner, especially because it’s already a pound cake recipe, but I decided to keep my options open for a little while longer. They’ll need some adjustments, though:- I’d rather use fresh coconut, so I’ll grate a pre-skinned coconut and toast it (just a little: not enough to make it “crunchy,” but just enough to release the coconut flavor).
- I’ll use regular, all-purpose flour instead of cake flour. We don’t want a fine crumb for breakfast loaf: a too-light texture would fall apart if subjected to the hasty cutting and frequent transportation required of a breakfast bread in this house. Plus, I’d rather save the cake flour for a recipe that really needs it.
- I’ll reduce the sugar to make it taste less dessert-like.
Unfortunately, after I bought a skinned coconut, I noticed that it was molded.
Molded! The two spots of mold are infintesmal, so that’s why I missed it, but I’m glad I didn’t miss it this time around! As a result, I’ll have to use the sweetened coconut flakes I have in the cabinet already. (That’s okay, as I’ve already promised myself that I’ll start using what I already have more often.) Sure, it won’t be as awesome as with the fresh coconut, but the fresh’ll have to wait until next time.
The fresh coconut recipe is thus out of the question. I’d stick with the Coconut Pound Cake, rather than the Coconut Cake…except that the recipes are exactly the same, other than a change from sweetened to unsweetened coconut flakes, a corresponding change in sugar, and the addition of milk. Also, one uses coconut extract, while the other doesn’t. Because I’d like a moist cake (moister is not only yummier, but also easier to slice and lasts longer), I generally use the moister recipe: the regular ol’ Coconut Cake’ recipe. Taking the positive points of the discarded recipe and from the reviews, I’d toast the coconut, reduce the amount of sugar, and replace the whole milk with the same amount of coconut milk.
On the morning I wanted the cake, I woke up and immediately went to work in the kitchen (still in pajamas):
And setting up the recipe in quite a high-tech manner:
It was quite a cold morning, and I had a lot of trouble bringing ingredients to room temperature. Now, I felt not a little angry here: we’ve been suffering through horribly hot weather, unable to keep ingredients below the melting point and completely unable to make meringues, caramels, or other items that don’t do well in high humidity conditions. Overnight, the situation completely reverses itself! Sigh. My first action was to use Beranbaum’s trick of warming eggs in a bath of warm water:
Done! The butter, however, proved a little more difficult. At first, I used my regular trick: place butter on stove:
Quite rapidly, I realized that it wouldn’t do the trick, that I’d have to break out the big guns, that I’d have to…cube it on the stove:
After this trick didn’t work, I decided to place the butter cubes on either side of the frying pan as I toasted my coconut. Hopefully, the butter would soften from the heat coming off the pan:
Seven minutes later, I had toasted coconut…
...but cold butter! Finally, I just inverted the hot skillet over the butter, hoping to make the greenhouse effect work in my favor:
It looked ridiculous, but I finally had my butter and prepared my mis en scene:
Soon, I was on my way preparing the batter. The recipe had warned that the batter just might curdle. To my chagrin, with the entry of the first egg, I saw this:
Oh, it might curdle, eh? Eh? But, as with most curdling incidents, you only need to take a few breaths and keep beating:
Due to the generous amount of coconut (1-1/2 cups—equal to the amount of flour), the batter was quite thick and held up almost like a dough would. As a result, when I scraped the bowl down, I had a very interesting “mound” of batter that kept its shape like Play-Doh:
Phew! Once in the oven, the batter released an amazing smell, due to the coconut milk and the toasted coconut. I ended up with two small loaves and one large one. The small ones were done in perhaps 15 minutes’ time:
They were quite beautiful, for loaves. (Of course, it technically was a cake, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.) I’m a sucker for a nice, light golden crumb on the outside edges, and this little loaf performed like a champ:
As you can tell by this color, it’s got a lot of fat in it! The coconut milk and the butter were a little bit too much when combined with a small surface area, itself coated with Bakers’ Joy. The two small loaves were too much for Andrew, although I thought they tasted fantastic and ate a small loaf all on my own (which made me sick for the rest of the day). The large loaf, however, which I let cook for a long time to make a nicely thick, brown crust, dried out more than the small ones and therefore tasted less greasy, even if it technically wasn’t.
This recipe was a success. Next time, I think I’ll cut the butter a little to minimize the grease factor, and I might use unsweetened coconut flakes, or—even better—use fresh coconut. Next time, let’s hope I don’t buy a molded coconut! Then, we can really see what this recipe can produce.