Granny's Coconut Pound Cake

I love this book.  I bought it at Sam's Club several years ago.  It is called "Recipe Keepsakes."  It is spiral bound and has dividers and indexes with pockets and many pages for you to write your recipes.  The only thing I wish it had that it doesn't is a section for canning recipes.
  
When I find a recipe to try,  I put it into the appropriate indexed pocket and if it is a recipe the family enjoys, I then write it in the book.  Sometimes I am in a big hurry and only cut out the recipe and tape it to a page, later when I get the time I will hand write it in.  I hope someday my daughter or one of my granddaughter's will enjoy making the recipes and will love having them handwritten in my own handwriting.  The recipes my own Mom has given me and the couple of handwritten recipes from my Granny are taped permanently in my book.  These I treasure.

Today it is raining, Thank you again Lord and since Grandson is almost out of snacks to take to school

I pulled out my Recipe Keepsake's book to make Granny's Coconut Pound Cake. 

Granny's Coconut Pound Cake

• 1 1/2 cups Crisco  (I use the cheaper store brand unless Crisco is on sale)
• 2 3/4 cup sugar
• 6 eggs
• 3 cups plain flour (measure before sifting)
• pinch of salt
• 1 level tsp baking powder
• 1 cup sweet milk
• 3 tsp lemon or vanilla extract (or a mixture of both if desired)
• 1 cup finely grated coconut (I use the coconut in a bag)

 
Beat Crisco and sugar together for 10 minutes.  I don't know why it is for 10 minutes but Granny said to do it, so I do it.  I don't have a fancy stand mixer and neither did Granny so my arm gets a good workout with the hand mixer. 

Add whole eggs one at a time and beat well after each addition.

You will have a lovely pale lemon colored batter beginning at this point.

Sift flour, baking powder and salt together in a separate bowl.  

 
while running your mixer; slowly add the cup of milk to your Crisco, sugar, egg mixture.  I use regular whole milk.  Granny had a cow when she wrote sweet milk on her recipes. I don't have a cow and I am out of fresh goat milk.

Now add your sifted flour, baking powder and salt mixture a little at a time and mix well.

Add flavoring and mix well... Today I experimented and used pineapple extract.  PS... It was yummy!

Add coconut.

Stir the coconut into batter.

 Grease and flour your pan.  I normally bake this cake in a bundt pan if I want a fancy looking cake or a 10 inch tube pan.  Today I greased and floured two loaf pans so I can slice it in uniform slices for Grandson's school snacks.

  I divided, well...kind of divided my batter between the two pans.

 
Bake the cake in a 300 degree, preheated oven for 1 1/2 hours or until toothpick inserted near center comes out clean.

After removing from oven. Let cake(s) sit for 10 minutes before removing pan(s).

 
Let cake(s) cool  before slicing

I slice mine into serving size pieces

place them in Ziploc snack bags and freeze them on a cookie sheet.

When they are frozen I remove them from the cookie sheet and stack them in the freezer.  I can remove a slice from the freezer and put in Grandson's backpack each day.  It will be thawed by his snack time.  Another plus to this is that the cake is not sitting out on the counter where we would for sure over indulge! These two loaves made enough slices for grandson an entire month of school snacks plus a couple of pieces left over for Papa Bear and I to have a slice each with a cup of coffee.

It is worth every minute of making a cake from scratch when a six year old comes home from school and says "Grandma, that cake you gave me for snack was awesome!"