Tippy's Coconut Frosting

Author Notes

At some point during our pre-teen years, the kids in my family decided we all needed dog names. My grandmother, whose real name was Beatrice, got "Tippy," and it became an endearment that endured. Tippy loved coconut, and she often used her longtime friend Ethel's unusual coconut frosting to turn a plain yellow sheet cake into a divine dessert, which was waiting for us on her kitchen counter when we'd drop by on our bikes. I'd forgotten about this recipe until I was scrounging through my Aunt Mariah's cookbooks and found my Aunt Judy's unbelievable collection "Fifty Years of Cooking: Recipes from the Files of Judith Lucinda Nunn Alley," a spiral bound treasure that I am in trouble for not returning in over a year. There are many variations on this recipe out there, but I have yet to find one that dares to use such an enormous amount of sugar, and that does not bother adding some whipped cream (Or CoolWhip, as the era of origin typically demanded) when employing this stuff as a cake topping rather than a filling. —EmilyNunn