New Zealand's iconic baking-tin classic: shortcake base topped with raspberry jam and a soft coconut meringue
Origin: New Zealand
From the journey of Coconut.
New Zealand's relationship with desiccated coconut is one of the country's most defining, and most overlooked, culinary stories. The 'baking tin' culture of New Zealand households (every New Zealand home maintains a tin of home baking for visitors, children's after-school snacks, and morning tea) is one of the strongest domestic culinary traditions in the country, and desiccated coconut is its most constant ingredient. It appears in Anzac biscuits (the oat and coconut biscuits sent to ANZAC troops in World War I), afghans (chocolate oat biscuits dusted with desiccated coconut, arguably New Zealand's most iconic biscuit), coconut ice (the pink-and-white confection from the church fete), and Louise cake; the baked slice that is perhaps the most distinctively New Zealand of all. Louise cake (named, like the lamington and the pavlova, for a long-forgotten Victorian personage; probably Princess Louise, Queen Victoria's fourth daughter) is a baked slice in the classic New Zealand tradition: a buttery shortcake base pressed into a tin, covered with a generous layer of raspberry jam, then topped with a meringue enriched with desiccated coconut that bakes to a soft, barely-golden, chewy crown. The combination of crisp pastry, sharp-sweet jam, and soft coconut meringue is perfectly balanced and perfectly New Zealand in its modesty: it is a slice that makes no grand claims but delivers entirely on its promise. New Zealand's desiccated coconut culture arrived via the British colonial baking tradition and the Pacific trade network that connected New Zealand's ports to Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and the coconut coast of Queensland in the late 19th century. The British colonial kitchen, with its emphasis on home-baked biscuits, slices, and cakes for entertaining, was transplanted almost entirely to the New Zealand colonial household, and desiccated coconut, arriving via the imperial grocery trade, became as ordinary a pantry ingredient as plain flour. But New Zealand's coconut story has a second strand that runs parallel to the colonial baking tradition and is growing in cultural significance. New Zealand's Pacific Islander communities, Samoan, Tongan, Cook Islander, Niuean, Fijian, are among the largest Pacific Islander populations outside their home islands. They brought with them their own fresh-coconut cooking traditions: Samoan palusami (coconut cream in taro leaves), Tongan ota 'ika (raw fish in lime and coconut cream), Cook Island ika mata, Niuean lu sipi (coconut and lamb). Today these two coconut traditions coexist in New Zealand's food culture (the colonial desiccated-coconut baking tradition of the pākehā household, and the fresh-coconut cooking tradition of the Pacific Island communities) making New Zealand one of the most coconut-layered food cultures in the Southern Hemisphere.
Louise cake keeps for up to 4 days in an airtight tin. The texture improves on day two as the jam softens into the base and the meringue settles. Strawberry jam works equally well as a substitute for raspberry. For a more indulgent version, brush the warm shortcake base with a thin layer of lemon curd before adding the jam, which adds a pleasant tartness.
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