Today's best coconut cake, cream pie recipes plucked straight from Palm Beach history

You would have eaten well if you’d been a guest at Palm Beach’s first hotel, which graced the island years before Henry Flagler arrived here.

It wasn’t just the fish the proprietors caught and the wild game they could shoot from the front porch.

There was an awful lot of coconut — and that meant desserts galore made with it, including coconut cake, which is beloved to this day.

But what would you expect from a lakefront hotel/inn called the Cocoanut Grove House? (Yes, coconut was then spelled with an “a”).

More: Palm Beach's love affair with coconut cake dates to Flagler's Hotel Royal Poinciana

Originally opened in 1880 as an eight-room addition to a family’s home three blocks north of today’s Royal Palm Way, the property featured a lush grove of coconut palm trees planted thanks to a cargo of coconuts carried by an 1878 Spanish shipwreck that beached here.

“The visitors to the Cocoanut Grove House were especially fascinated with the hundreds of coconut trees planted on the grounds,” according to the late Charles Dimick Reese, who noted coconuts were prepared in many different ways at the hotel.

As the great-great grandson of the Cocoanut Grove House’s owner, who also was elected Palm Beach’s first mayor, Reese would know.

More: Palm Beach history: Where the ‘it’ crowd mingled among the cocoanuts

Reese wrote a cookbook in 1991 featuring, among other things, generations-old family recipes.

They stem not only from his great-great grandfather Elish Newton “Cap” Dimick and his wife, Elle, but from, among others, his great-grandfather, Thomas Tipton Reese, and grandfather, also Claude Dimick Reese — both of whom also served as early Palm Beach mayors.

Cookbook-author Reese, who died in 1998, was an enthusiastic home cook who relished making tasty things to enjoy with family and friends.

A line formed outside a local bookstore when he signed copies in 1991 of his cookbook, “Palm Beach Roots and Recipes.”

The coconut recipes in the book include not just coconut cake, but coconut cream pie, coconut macaroons, coconut pralines and coconut pudding.

Here are the recipes, complete with Reese’s use of the old spelling of coconut (with an “a,” i.e. cocoanut):

Cocoanut Cream Pie

Ingredients:

4 eggs

½ cup sugar

1½ cups milk

½ cup cream

½ cup fresh ground cocoanut

1⅛ teaspoon vanilla

Pastry shell

Method: Combine eggs, sugar, milk, cream and vanilla and beat for two minutes. Strain and add the cocoanut. Pour into a pie plate lined with pastry having a flited edge and bake to 450 degrees for 10 minutes; then reduce heat to 325 for 30 minutes.

The vanilla may be omitted and a little nutmeg grated over the custard before it goes into the oven. In lieu of fresh cocoanut, shredded cocoanut soaked in milk may be used.

Florida Cocoanut Cake

Ingredients:

½ cup butter

1½ cups sugar

4 egg yolks

1 cup milk

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 whites of eggs, stiffly beaten

1¼ teaspoons vanilla

Method: Cream thoroughly ¼ cup butter and 1½ cups sugar. Beat in the yolks of 4 eggs; add 1 cup of milk and 2 cups of flour, with 2 teaspoons baking powder after sifting four times.

Add the whites of 2 eggs, beaten stiff., and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Put in two layer-cake pans and bake at 350 until done.

Icing for cake: 2 cups sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, freshly grated cocoanut, 2 egg whites, beaten stiff; ½ cup water and 1 teaspoon vinegar.

Add sugar and water to which has been added 1 teaspoon vinegar. Let boil “until it spins to a hair.” Pour over stiffly beaten whites of eggs and beat until it is set then add 1 teaspoon vanilla. Put between layers and top and sides of cake and cover with fresh-grated cocoanut.

Cocoanut Macaroons

Ingredients:

2 egg whites

2 cups cocoanut

½ cup sugar

1⅛ teaspoons vanilla

⅛ teaspoon salt

Method: Beat egg whites until frothy, add salt and sugar gradually and beat until whites stand in peaks. Fold in vanilla and cocoanut. Drop from the tip of a teaspoon on a well-greased baking pan. Bake about 30 minutes in a slow oven, 325 degrees.

Cocoanut Pralines

Ingredients:

4 cups sugar

8 tablespoons water

Grated meat of one cocoanut

Put 4 cups sugar unto a saucepan with 8 tablespoons water and cook until softball stage. Take from the fire and stir in the grated cocoanut meat. Put back on fire and continue stirring until it strings and then bubbles up a minute.

Remove at once and drop from kitchen spoon into well-greased platter. Ket dry and then gently lift candy with spatula. Never boil coconut more than a minute because it will darken.

Cocoanut Pudding

Ingredients:

3 teaspoons sugar

⅛ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 cup cocoanut milk

Mix dry ingredients and ½ cup coconut milk until smooth.

Scald 1½ cups cocoanut milk and add to mixture, stirring rapidly. Cook until clear and thick enough to coat with a spoon on low heat. Pour into shallow pan and cool until firm.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Recipes for coconut cake, cream pie date to Palm Beach's first hotel