Fresh Coconut Cake.....Morgan and Emma

The following recipe is our family favorite "Fresh Coconut Cake." My great aunt, Bertha Holland made this cake for our spring time family reunion every year. I actually looked forward to it for weeks!!!

Fresh Coconut Cake

Butter Cake Recipe

2 ½ cups plain flour

¾ teaspoon salt

2 cups sugar

3 eggs

¾ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup soft butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup buttermilk

·       Combine flour, salt, and soda blend with a whisk.

·       Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs 1 at a time and beat after each addition until yolk is blended in well.

·       Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk, mix until well blended. Stir in vanilla.

·       Bake 350 degrees in 3- 9” pans for 30 min.

Fresh Coconut Frosting

2 bags of frozen fresh coconut Thawed do not drain

1 16 oz container of sour cream

1 16 oz box of confectioner sugar

1 small container of whipped topping like cool whip

·       Mix together thawed coconut with juice, sour cream, and confectioner sugar in large mixing bowl. Fold in cool whip or whipped cream.

·       Frost layers when completely cool, cover top and sides of cake. Cover and refrigerate for at least 24 hours. Keeps refrigerated up to 5 days.

After 24 hours the flavors have time to blend and the sugars melt and seep down into the cake….It’s really good. If you want to use a pre mixed cake mix try Duncan Hines Butter recipe cake mix. It's almost as good as this "from scratch" recipe

I remember Aunt Bertha telling my mother that she liked to make this cake for the reunion because she could make it a couple days before. She would usually spend the day before and the early morning of the day of the reunion cooking things like fresh butterbeans, fresh baby new potatoes and garden peas, fresh creamed corn, and fresh green beans, and her wonderful cornbread dressing with giblet gravy and chicken with dumplings. I posted the dumpling and dressing recipes in an earlier post this month.

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Morgan and Emma Holland

Bertha was the oldest child of Morgan and Emma Holland, my great grandmother and great grandfather. I never met them, but I know a lot about them from the stories I heard all of the Aunts and Uncles tell. Bertha had some older half siblings, from my great grandfather Morgan's first marriage. I have to list them to remember how many there were in both groups! Bertha, Ruth, Ernest, Hubert, Oree, Louise, Ruby, Elmire and Naomi. The half siblings were Lucius, Lome, Lena May, and Jessie. I think that's all. There were 13 children in the house, until Jessie passed away in his early teens.



William Morgan And Emma McInnes Holland
Morgan was 28 years Emma's senior.



Morgan and Emma's gravesite in Ramer Baptist Church cemetary

                                Ramer Baptist Church Cemetary is on State Line Road near Cottonwood, Alabama.

Left to Right Standing: Ruth, Lena Mae, Jessie, Bertha
Seated left Oree, Hubert right



Mid 70's Holland Family Reunion
Left to Right Back row   Ruth, Ernest, Hubert, Elmire
Front Row Lena Mae, Naomi, Bertha, Ruby and Oree
Louise is missing from group she lived in New York,
Lucius, and Lome had passed away by this time.




Lucius, Ernest, Hubert holding my dad Doyle , Elmire, Louise and her husband, Bertha, Ruby, Lena Mae, Ruth and Charles Thurmon holding their children, My Granny Luvern, Lome's daughter, Lome, her son and husband. 





Ruby Holland

Aunt Bertha took care of all of the younger kids and helped with the cooking, washing and cleaning. Emma passed away soon after Elmire, the youngest child, was born. Eventually everyone married and moved away except for  Bertha and younger sister Ruby. They lived together until Aunt Bertha passed away in the spring of 1982.


Bertha Holland



Ruth Holland


It's hard to imagine taking care of 13 children. Cooking on a wood burning stove and laundry were major undertakings on a continual basis. They made their own soaps and lotions, ointments, and most medicines. They wove cotton fabrics and made all of their clothes using a peddal sewing machine or by hand. They made candles and rendered oil for cooking.

Clothes and sheets were washed using lye soap and boiled in a big cast iron wash pot, and then the water was twisted out by hand, and hung up on a rope or wire stretched between post to dry. Light weight cottons for the babies, and all of their diapers were washed by hand using a scrub board.

All water had to be pumped with a hand pump or brought up in a bucket from an open well outside. There was an out house, and chamber pots instead of toilets. Everyone old enough to do anything worked doing something all the time. Before you could take a warm bath you had to warm your water over a fire either in the fireplace or on a castiron wood burning stove.

My great grandfather Morgan and most of his sons worked cutting, sawing or pulping lumber. Rambo Saw Mill, located on Rambo road was a few miles away. This work would be in addition to taking care of their barnyard livestock. Horses, mules, beef cattle, milk cow, pigs, and chickens. They also had the big task of  planting, and harvesting crops for livestock and family food consumption.

After 1900 things changed with the industrial revolution. New machines were invented, to harvest crops and prepare foods for mass marketing.  Electricity came to remote areas and modern appliances and indoor plumbing made life easier.  

This is a picture of  Morgan plowing a field with a younger man. I think the younger man may be Lucius his oldest son.