Cokernut cream slabs vs chocolate butter balls
The coconut shy might do well to skip this post. After spying not one, but two outrageously sweet recipes for traditional sweets from the early 1920′s, I just had to make an exception to the cake rule.
Chocolate Butter Balls are a heady concoction of cocoa, butter and icing sugar, rolled in a mound of desiccated coconut. They’re taken from the Handy Hints Section (marked H.H.H!) of Home and Country, former membership magazine for the Women’s Institute. They’re terribly rich, as all truffle-like snuffles should be and take no time at all to make as an after-dinner indulgence.
The candy-striped Cokernut Cream, (known today as coconut ice minus a dash of Carnation ) seems angelic in comparison – coconut, icing sugar, egg whites and a drop of food colouring combine to make an easy version of a British classic. Slice up and serve into jars or wax boxes for the ultimate home-made gift or picnic addition.
Chocolate Butter Balls (makes 3)
- Beat 1/4 lb butter to a stiff cream
- Add 2.5 ozs cocoa and as much icing sugar as will form a stiff, smooth paste.
- Mould into small balls, roll in desiccated coconut.
- The fondant or cream must be neither sticky not dry. Practice will make perfect.
Cokernut cream (makes 6 pieces)
- Mix 1/2 lb icing sugar with 1/4 lb desiccated coconut.
- Prepare white of one egg and 3 tbsps of water in a bowl, divide and colour one half pink.
- Mix sugar and coconut to a stiff paste.
- Line a small box of grease-proof paper, put in it a layer of pink, then white, then pink and so on (I just did one of each).
- Cover with paper and set aside until next day; turn out and cut into lengths or cubes as desired.
