MAB – Page 14 – Deja Food

Cream Cakes

I spend a lot of our holidays in southwest France prowling around patisseries and artisan boulangeries with eyes like saucers, admiring the delicate and stylish combinations of cream and fruit and chocolate and truffle and glaze and, and, and….

However, in order to get there, it is rather a mammoth road trip, so I generally make sure I’ve got a handful of recipe books with me in the car to while away the hours. With no other reading matter to hand, I find it’s a good way to make sure I actually READ some of the hundreds of books on my shelves and I invariably discover something I’ve overlooked before. Sure enough, this year, yet again, I have re-discovered a recipe in a dusty housewives’ pamphlet from umpty-plonk years ago that reveals itself to be a real gem and, despite my hopeless and complete admiration for the exotic and awe-inspiring patisserie creations of France, I am enchanted all over again by British simplicity.

The recipe for these cakes was so brief I almost passed it by, yet curiosity caused me to pause and read it over, wondering what ‘trick’ there was; surely the small paragraph didn’t contain making, baking AND decorating instructions for cream cakes?

Sure enough, it didn’t, because the recipe was for cakes MADE with cream. Specifically, substituting cream into the mix instead of butter.

So simple – flour, sugar, eggs, cream, baking powder. I just had to try them.

And they were delicious, and a complete breeze to make; no fretting over whether the butter is soft enough, or whether the sugar is dissolved sufficiently. They rose, magnificently domed, in the oven and are light and tender of crumb.

If I had just one niggle, it was that they were sweet. Tooth-achingly so. I couldn’t resist tweaking them a little. Even the sugar-pop posing as my daughter prefers this version. Of course she ate the sweet batch too, but she prefers these.

There’s no added flavouring – you could add some if you like, but I urge you to try the recipe just once, with farm-fresh eggs and rich double – or even clotted – cream.

The simplicity, lightness and flavour will be a delight.

Promise.

Cream Cakes

The cakes in the photo are made in mini layer tins I bought in my local The Range, 4 x 10cm diameter pans for £2.50 (also fab for Yorkshire Puddings – I bought 2 sets) and I put 100g of batter per pan and made six. If you’re using large cupcake/muffin tins, I suggest just 50g of batter per ‘hole’, and thus twelve cakes. Cooking time is the same for both sizes.

150g caster sugar
2 large eggs
125ml cream – double or clotted
150g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C Fan.
Crack the eggs into a bowl and add the sugar. Beat with a balloon whisk (or by hand or stand mixer) until the eggs are frothy and the sugar dissolved – about 5 minutes.
Add the cream and whisk in.
Sift the flour and baking powder together and stir into the rest of the ingredients – the balloon whisk/attachment is best for this, less washing up too!
Grease and line your tins, or use cupcake cases.
Spoon your mixture into your tins. Spread the batter to the sides, leaving a hollow in the middle. They will still dome up during cooking, but this way it should be a little more controlled.
Bake for 15 minutes until risen and golden brown.
Cool on a wire rack.
I think these are delicious served warm, lightly dusted with icing sugar and with a drizzle of cold cream poured over and a few fresh berries on the side. You can also split them and fill with whipped cream and berries or jam, or indeed any way that takes your fancy!

Baking Powder Bread

20th century, Yeast

Similar to, but also different from Soda Bread, this loaf actually works out to be a little bit slower to make than Soda Bread, but the extra time is worth the wait because it is also lighter.

As a bonus, it doesn’t require buttermilk, using instead a 30 minute ‘lactic ferment’ of ordinary milk and plain flour to mix the ingredients together. Allowing the mixture to stand for 30 minutes stimulates the enzymes that help produce the lift in the finished loaf. And it has to be 30 minutes – no longer. And definitely don’t try and make it less because the results are immediately visible – and not that fun to eat!

One final tweak was to bake it under a pan. In a tin, but also under a pan. Much like the Overnight Bread and Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread, an enclosed baking space keeps in the steam, helps the rise and protects the crust from becoming overly dark. The results can be seen below.

Side by side comparison of three different baking conditions. Left: Mixed without the 30 minute wait. Middle: 30 minute ferment, baked uncovered in a tin. Right: 30 minute ferment, baked in a tin covered by an inverted saucepan.

Here’s a closer look at the crumb of each loaf:

Loaf made without the 30 minute lactic ferment — Loaf mixed without the 30 minute ferment The loaf hasn’t risen much at all and consequently has retained a great deal of cragginess on the top. The dough did not expand to fill the tin, causing rough and uneven sides. The crumb is very dense and noticeably yellow in colour.

Loaf baked uncovered — Loaf mixed with 30 minute ferment, baked uncovered in a tin. A dark crust, but well-risen and most of the cragginess has been smoothed by the rise. Crumb fairly open, but loaf noticeably flat across the top.

Loaf cooked under pan — The most impressive result. Baked with the 30 minute ferment, in a tin, covered by an inverted saucepan. The crust isn’t overly dark and the crumb nice and open. The rise has allowed the top of the loaf to be pleasantly crusty and for the dough to fill the tin, as demonstrated by the smooth sides of the loaf.

Baking Powder Bread

Recipe adapted from MANNA by Walter T. Banfield, 1938.

For the ferment:

285ml cold whole milk
225g plain white flour

For the rest of the loaf
150g plain white flour + 40g (maybe)
12g cream of tartar + 6g of bicarbonate of soda OR 24g baking powder[1]
25g lard or butter
1/2 tsp salt
10g golden syrup, agave nectar or mild-flavoured honey

Whisk the milk and flour together and cover the bowl with plastic. I use the bowl of my stand mixer, so that I can use the machine to mix in the rest of the ingredients later.
Set aside for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 210°C, 190°C Fan.
Grease a deep, 20cm, loose-bottom cake tin or similar.
Put the remaining ingredients into the bowl of a food processor and blitz to combine. Make sure the sugar syrup mixes in thoroughly and isn’t left stuck to the side of the bowl.
When the milk mixture has sat for 30 minutes, add the rest of the ingredients and stir to combine. If the mixture seems a little too wet, add up to 40g more flour, until it is dry enough to handle.
Working quickly, knead the dough a few times to smooth it out, and shape it into a disk.
Drop the disk of dough into the prepared tin and put the tin onto a baking sheet.
Invert a large saucepan or casserole over the top of the tin to keep in the steam. Make sure the rim lies flat against the baking sheet.
Bake for 30 minutes.
Remove the pan covering the loaf and bake for a further 10-15 minutes, until crisped and brown and sounding hollow when tapped on the bottom.
Cool completely on a wire rack before using.

Variations

You can use this basic method to make any number of different flavoured loaves, merely by mixing up the types of flour you use in both the ferment and the remaining ingredients: barley flour, oat flour, wholemeal, brown, etc.

Also consider adding interesting texture in the form of flax seeds, pinhead oatmeal, bran, wheatgerm etc.

The sugar syrup can also be varied by using treacle, maple syrup, malt, and so on.

Whatever changes you decide on, just make sure the overall quantity of flour remains constant.

Here are a couple of combinations to get you started. These loaves are slightly denser, so they have the enrichment of a little beaten egg to help lift the texture. I know half an egg is a ridiculous amount – sorry about that – the quantities for a whole egg were huge, and would require a huge oven to bake in. Use a small egg if you can find them, or double the recipe and make 2 loaves (as long as you’ve got 2 large pots to cover them as they bake) or one giant loaf.

Wholemeal/Granary Bread
- 285ml cold milk
- 150g brown flour
- 75g plain white flour
- ——
- 150g wholemeal or granary flour
- 12g cream of tartar + 6g of bicarbonate of soda OR 24g baking powder
- 25g lard or butter
- ½ tsp salt
- 10g treacle or molasses
- ½ large egg – whisked
Oat Bread
- 285ml cold milk
- 150g brown flour
- 75g plain white flour
- ——
- 150g oat flour
- 12g cream of tartar + 6g of bicarbonate of soda OR 24g baking powder
- 25g lard or butter
- ½ tsp salt
- 10g treacle or molasses
- ½ large egg – whisked

[1] Commercial baking powder is usually 25% rice flour or cornflour, to keep the active ingredients from clumping. The cream of tartar and bicarbonate of soda are the actual active ingredients, and therefore all you need to add. If, however, you’re using commerical baking powder, you’ll need to add 24g in order to get the above quantities of active ingredients.

Dundee Cake

19th century, Large Cakes

This recipe is fabulous – and this recommendation is coming from an until-recently Dundee-Cake-Disliker. The crust is crisp but delicately thin, the insides delicately moist and buttery, rich with the sweetness of sultanas and the tang of candied orange peel.

The modern Dundee Cake has an iconic appearance: the carefully laid-out pattern of whole, blanched almonds immediately distinguishes it from other fruit cakes. For many years I’ve not been a fan, based on the Dundee Cakes I’d been served as a child: dry, crumbly, tasteless, overly-fruited masses with burnt nuts on the top and, horror of horrors, glacé cherries studding their depths.

After a bit of digging around in the cake history books, it turns out that the Dundee Cake known today is quite a few steps removed from the original. So I had high hopes that with a little experimentation I could, as with other recipes I’ve managed to rehabilitate from childhood dislikes, bring Dundee Cake back to its former glory and once again make it a teatime favourite.

Dundee Cake was first made by the Dundee-based Keiller company, as an off-season sideline to their marmalade business, as a way of using up excess peel generated by the marmalade manufacturing process. By gentleman’s agreement, no other bakers in the city made the cake. Keiller’s were also responsible for popularising their creation under the name Dundee Cake, described by Alan Davidson in the Oxford Companion to Food as light, buttery delicacy stuffed with sultanas, almonds and candied orange peel.

Quite when the cake was first made is a bit of a mystery, but it is mentioned in stories and novels of the mid-nineteenth century. An 1853 edition of The Lancet carries an advertisement for a Regent Street caterer, which includes Dundee Cake in its list of available cakes. This recipe is based on Madam Marie de Joncourt’s 1882 recipe, but tweaked to conform to the description of the original delicate and rich cake: more butter, almonds, sultanas and peel, no currants, no almonds on top. I’ve left off the distinguishing almonds, because they’re not mentioned in the original recipe, but you can make your own decision on that.

Dundee Cake

180g butter – softened
112g caster sugar
4 eggs
1tsp vanilla extract
180g flour
150g sultanas
2 tsp baking powder
1/3 grated nutmeg
100g ground almonds
125g candied peel, cut into thin, 2cm slivers

Preheat the oven to 170°C, 150°C Fan.
Grease a 20cm, deep (at least 10cm) loose-bottomed cake tin.
Line the base with a circle of parchment.
Tear off a long strip of parchment, long enough to wrap around the whole tin.
Fold the strip of parchment in half lengthwise.
Unfold, then fold in each long edge towards the centre fold.
Fold both halves together, making for four layers of parchment.
Line the tin with this 4-ply strip of parchment. Any fruit-filled cake needs protecting from the high temperatures that baking in a tin will generate.
Grease the parchment on the sides and base of the tin.
Put the softened butter into a bowl and whisk until light and creamy.
Add the sugar and whisk until pale and fluffy.
Whisk in the eggs one at a time. Whisk for a good 3-4 minutes before adding the next egg.
Stir in the vanilla.
Gently stir the remaining ingredients together, then fold into the wet ingredients. Don’t over-mix, or you run the risk of deflating all the air you’ve just whisked into it.
Spread the mixture into the tin and level the top.
Bake for one hour, gently turning the tin around 180 degrees after 40 minutes.
Check for done-ness by inserting a wooden toothpick deep into the centre of the cake. If no liquid batter is clinging to it when removed, the cake is done.
Cool for 10 minutes in the tin, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.
Store, wrapped in foil, in an airtight tin.

Retro Tarts

20th century, Sweet Pastry

Some time ago *waves hand vaguely* I introduced you to an all-butter pastry which I had adapted from an old Victorian commercial baker’s book. The crust for my Cheese and Potato Pies has about 25% cornflour, which makes it fantastically silky-smooth to handle and which also bakes beautifully crisp and dry.

The recipe this week is for a sweet version, also from the same baking handbook: slightly different flour/butter proportions and enriched with the yolk of an egg, it is both more crisp and more delicate than the savoury version and a perfect foil for the three sweet fillings I’ve lined up for you, because I thought it rather a cheek to give you just a pastry recipe this week and let you get on with it. Plus I couldn’t get a lump of pastry to look tempting all by itself, so here we are.

The fillings are very much variations on a theme of dark muscovado sugar and I’m really pleased with the three differing flavours that resulted. The Butterscotch is really dark and very much a ‘grown-up’ flavour – you could even add a slosh of real scotch to ramp it up to dinner-party level. The Toffee is very child-friendly in flavour – almost mild – and a real comfort food. The Gypsy Tart is a 2-ingredient classic that harks back to memories of school dinners. There are many recipes for the filling ‘out there’, most of which generally have too high a proportion of sugar and too much milk, resulting in gigantic pies of tooth-aching sweetness. This version makes for a light and frothy filling with just the right balance of flavour and sweetness. It is the only one of the three that needs any further cooking once poured into the pre-baked pastry shell, but at just 20 minutes in a cool oven, these too are ready in a flash.

I’ve left all three unadorned, but you could add embellishment if you like – unsweetened whipped cream or creme fraiche rather than more sweetness in a chantilly or buttercream, is my recommendation. A smattering of chocolate sprinkles for the toffee tart, perhaps? Your call.

Cut Retro Tarts Dark Butterscotch (left), Toffee (middle), Gypsy Tart (right)

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry

This quantity makes enough for one large tart or 4-8 individual tarts.

170g plain flour
56g cornflour
125g unsalted butter
15g caster sugar
1 large yolk

ice water to mix

Put the flours, butter, sugar and yolk into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
With the machine running, gradually add the cold water a tablespoon at a time until the mixture comes together in a ball.
Tip the mixture onto a floured surface, knead smooth then wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least 30 minutes.
Roll out thinly and line your greased tart tin. If making smaller tarts, cut the pastry into 4 and roll out individually.
Leave the excess pastry hanging over the side of the tin/s and chill in the fridge for another 30 minutes. The pastry will shrink as it chills and then you can trim the excess. If you trim it first, the pastry will shrink down inside your tart cases, probably unevenly, and your pastry cases won’t have a nice finish.
Preheat the oven to 200°C, 180ºC Fan.
Prick the bottom of the tart/s with a fork to prevent blistering, line with baking parchment and fill with beans/rice/beads.
Bake for 10 minutes for small tarts, 12-14 minutes for a large tart.
Remove the parchment and beans and bake for a further 3 minutes for small tarts, 5-8 minutes for a large tart, until fully baked.
Allow to cool.

Butterscotch filling

170g unsalted butter
170g dark muscovado sugar
35g plain flour
100ml milk

Melt the butter and sugar in a pan, stirring.
Make a paste of the flour with a little of the milk, then stir in the rest of the milk.
Pour this milk mixture into the butter mixture and whisk vigorously.
Continue whisking until the mixture comes to the boil. Simmer for 2-3 minutes, stirring, to ‘cook out’ the taste of the flour. The mixture will thicken.
Remove from the heat. Add a little extra milk – or scotch! – if it seems too thick, then pour into the bake pastry case/s and allow to cool.

Toffee filling

Warm the golden syrup before measuring it out, it will be much easier to pour accurately.

100g butter
40g plain flour
250ml milk
60g dark muscovado sugar
100g golden syrup

chocolate sprinkles (optional)

Melt the butter in a pan and add the flour. Whisk until frothed and starting to darken.
Warm the milk and sugar together and pour into the butter mixture, whisking briskly.
Keep stirring over the heat until the mixture thickens, then remove from the heat and stir in the golden syrup.
If the mixture seems too thick, add a little extra milk to loosen it.
When you’re happy with the consistency, pour into the pastry shells and set aside to cool.
Scatter over the chocolate sprinkles, if using, before serving.

Gypsy Tart filling

1 x 170ml tin evaporated milk – chilled
120g dark muscovado sugar

Chill the tin of evaporated milk in the fridge overnight. Do not skip this step. It will not whip up to its frothy perfection unless the milk is thoroughly chilled.
Get rid of all the lumps in the sugar by pounding it in a pestle and mortar. Work a little at a time rather than trying to get the whole batch lump-free in one go. It’ll give you something to do while the milk chills.
Put the sugar and the chilled milk into a bowl and whisk for AT LEAST ten minutes. You want the sugar to dissolve and the milk to increase in volume and become light and frothy, like half-whipped double cream. You can test whether the sugar is fully dissolved by rubbing a little of the mixture between finger and thumb – it should not feel grainy at all. If you have a stand mixer and a balloon whisk attachment, this might take a little less time, but not much.
Preheat the oven to 120°C – NO FAN
Pour your mousse-like mixture into your pre-baked pastry case/s. It will not rise much in baking, so you can fill them pretty full.
Bake for 20 minutes or until the filling has set: no wobble when gently shaken.
Set aside to cool.

Plum Pudding

17th century, Pudding

This pudding has a lot going for it: its fruity, spiced, zesty with candied peel, suet-free and thus vegetarian, less than 2 hours in the making/baking – and over 300 years old!

I found this recipe in the manuscript recipe book of Elizabeth Philipps (circa 1694), when I was hunting for Christmas recipes. The recipe’s full title is “An excellent Plum Pudding Hot or Cake Cold”, which is just the kind of two-for-one recipe that our modern Christmas needs – especially if you’re running late and missed stir-up Sunday. Excellent example of Deja Food too!

The recipe is marked with the annotation “daughter Green”. I think this must mean the recipe was passed on by her daughter, whose married name was Green – although there were unusual naming conventions back then; perhaps Mistress Philipps had a rainbow of daughters? We can but guess. As if the title wasn’t endorsement enough, a later hand has also awarded a tick and the comment ‘good’. This made this recipe a culinary ‘dead cert’ in my opinion: something that was so delicious when tasted, the recipe was requested and recorded by hand in the family recipe book, and this approval was then endorsed by a third party coming across the recipe at a later date.

You can bake this in a regular cake tin, but a ceramic pudding bowl works just as well, and makes the resemblance to a Christmas Pudding much clearer. The hour-long baking time creates a wonderfully dark and crunchy crust, which contrasts dramatically with the light, pale insides. You can also bake it in individual pudding bowls (the recipe makes 10 small puddings), which looks very sweet too, although the shorter cooking time makes for a paler outside. This would be too much traditional Christmas Pudding for one person, but this pudding is a yeast-raised, light, fruited, cake texture, and much more refreshing to the palate as well as being easier on the stomach.

Plum Pudding

375g plain flour
1/3 nutmeg, grated
1 tsp ground mace
½ tsp ground cloves
1 sachet fast-action yeast

40g granulated sugar
150g unsalted butter
150ml cream/milk
50ml cream sherry or mead
2 large eggs

300g currants
75g raisins
60g mixed candied peel [1]
40g flaked almonds

Mix the flour, yeast and spices.
Put the sugar, butter and milk/cream in a pan and warm gently until the butter is melted.
Add the sherry or mead.
If the mixture is still hot, let it cool a little first, then whisk in the eggs.
Add the liquids to the flour and mix thoroughly. It should form a soft dough. Add up to 150ml more milk if you think it is required.
Set somewhere warm to rise for 30 minutes.
Stir in the fruit and almonds until thoroughly combined.
If you are making small, individual puddings, each mould or aluminium foil cup will take about 125g of dough. Otherwise, generously butter a 1.6 litre pudding bowl and add the dough.
Set aside for 15 minutes while the oven warms up.
Preheat the oven to 180°C, 160°C Fan.
Bake
- a single, large pudding for about an hour. Turn the basin round after 30 minutes and check for done-ness at 50 minutes.
- the small, individual puddings for 15-20 minutes.
Remove from the oven and set aside to rest for 10 minutes.
Run a spatula around the sides of the basin to loosen the pudding, and carefully turn out onto your serving plate.
Serve warm, with double cream.
For later: Even though this pudding is nice cold, it really is at its best just warm, so for serving later, zap slices/individual puddings in the microwave for 20 seconds before serving.

[1] I used 20g each of orange, lemon and pink grapefruit, rinsed of excess syrup

Goathland Treacle Tart

20th century, Sweet Pastry

Goathland is a tiny village – population less than 500 – tucked away in the North York Moors National Park, just south-west of Whitby. It looks an absolutely delightful place, and Harry Potter fans will recognise Goathland Station as doubling for Hogsmeade (the station nearest Hogwarts) as well as Aidensfield from the popular TV series Heartbeat.

In the 1930s, Mrs Arthur Webb was commissioned by the BBC to visit farms throughout the UK “in order to secure something that was characteristic of its cooking and preparation of food.” In much the same way as her contemporary, Dorothy Hartley, would – Mrs Webb tramped around the countryside conversing with farmers wives and watching them cook in their own kitchens, frequently with awe and respect.

I looked at the fireplace. I watched the flames travelling under the oven.
“How do you manage to keep the heat going – you burn coal, of course?”
“Oh no” the answer came swiftly; “I never trust coal or anything else than wood for my baking. I understand wood better and I know exactly what heat it will give.”
“Do you ever have failures?”
“Failures? Of course not. I know exactly what I want and I make it.”
“Well, how do you manage to arrive at such delicious pies as these?” and I pointed to the laden table. “Do you weigh the ingredients?”
“Never. I could not spare the time. I just know how much the flour, butter, lard, milk, water and eggs will make.”

Luckily for us, Mrs Webb was able to jot down the ingredients for this fantastic tart, which I have only tweaked very slightly in converting to metric measurements and adding cooking times/temperatures. I’m curious to know which farm in this peaceful area was the origin of such a flavour-packed bake.

As you can see from the photograph. it bears little resemblance to the traditional British, tooth-achingly sweet, open-topped Treacle Tart made with golden syrup and fresh breadcrumbs. Whilst still containing breadcrumbs, the filling for this double-crust tart is packed with fruit both fresh and dried, actually contains treacle, and is much closer in taste to a traditional mincemeat, although blessedly fat-free. Along with the dried fruit and spices, the filling is given some fresh zing with chopped apple and lemon zest/juice. The dry breadcrumbs absorb any apple juice during cooking, resulting in a tart with a firm, fruity filling, no soggy bottom, and packing a huge wallop of flavour. The lack of fat in the filling means that the taste is bright and fresh and never cloying or overly rich.

I’ve chosen to wrap this in my favourite cornflour shortcrust, as its dry crispness when baked is the perfect foil against which the filling can really shine.

Sidebar: Mrs Webb’s notes tell us merely to “cover with another pastry” – which is all well and good, but pays little attention to the presentation which is, after all, usually the first thing that tempts us with a dish. I’ve made a conscious decision to try to present dishes, no matter how humble their ingredients, in the most appetising and eye-catching way. If I may paraphrase the great William Morris “Serve nothing from your oven that you do not know to be delicious or believe to be beautiful.”

Which is all well and good, except that when it comes to decorating, I usually have the patience and finesse of a potato. But I also have a little imagination, so I created the above decoration for the tart lid, in the best traditions of housewives across the years, with what I had to hand: namely, a teaspoon, an apple corer and a skewer.

The pastry was crimped by laying the pastry lid so that the edges lay vertically against the sides of the tin. Insert the handle of a teaspoon between the outer edge of the pastry and the tin and your finger and thumb against the inside of the pastry. Press inwards with the spoon handle as you pinch the two pieces of pastry together. I had intended only to hand-crimp the tart edges, but the imprint of the teaspoon handle has made a pretty design, so I’m going to run with it. *lying* I totally meant to do that.

The pattern was made firstly by gently pressing an apple-corer into the lid – enough to mark, but not enough to cut all the way through the pastry. Then I used a wooden skewer to poke holes in lines from the centre ring to each of the surrounding rings. Lastly I added a line of holes between each of these lines.

If you’re in any doubt whether or not to try this tart – and I really hope you will – let me just say that I’m seriously considering using this as my mince pie recipe this year.

Just sayin’.

Goathland Treacle Tart

Pastry
225g plain flour
60g cornflour or rice flour
140g butter
ice cold water

Put the flours and butter into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
With the machine running, gradually add the cold water a tablespoon at a time until the mixture comes together in a ball.
Tip the mixture onto a floured surface, knead smooth then wrap in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes.
Remove the pastry from the fridge and cut off two thirds. Put the remaining third back into the fridge.
Roll this piece out to a thickness of 4-5mm and use it to line a greased 18cm pie tin, loose-bottomed for preference, making sure there is enough pastry overlapping the sides of the tin to allow for joining the lid.
Chill while you mix the filling.

Filling

60g dry breadcrumbs [1]
60g currants
60g sultanas
30g candied orange peel – diced
30g candied lemon peel – diced
1 small cooking apple – peeled, cored and chopped/grated
zest and juice of 1 lemon
1/2tsp ground ginger
1/2tsp ground mixed spice
30ml treacle
30ml milk

Mix the breadcrumbs, dried fruit, candied peel, spices and lemon zest in a bowl.
Warm the treacle by placing the open can in a saucepan of water over a low heat. As it warms, it becomes less viscous and easier to pour.
Pour out the required amount of treacle and mix with the lemon juice, then add the milk afterwards. NB Don’t mix the lemon juice with the milk first, otherwise it will curdle.
Add the liquids and the chopped apple to the rest of the ingredients and stir to combine.
Preheat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.
Add the filling to the chilled pastry case and smooth over.
Roll out the remaining pastry to make the lid.
Wet the edges of the pastry with water, and lay the pastry lid onto the filling. Ease the edges together as per the diagram above. Make sure there’s no air trapped underneath the lid – in the oven this air will expand in the heat and may cause the lid to lift away from the filling.
Use the back of a knife (so as not to scratch your non-stick tin) to trim away the excess pastry, then crimp the edges as described above.
Decorate as desired.
Brush with beaten egg, or with milk and then sprinkle with a little caster sugar. (I used just egg).
Bake for 30 minutes, turning the tin around after 20 minutes to ensure it colours evenly.
Set aside to cool.
After cooling for 10 minutes, if you’ve used a loose-bottomed tin, the tart can be gently removed and served, or set onto a wire rack until cold.

[1] These must be really dry. Definitely not fresh. If you have none to hand, nor any stale bread, make breadcrumbs of 3 slices of bread and lay them on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Dry (without browning) in a 120°C/100°C Fan oven for 20-30 minutes.

Snow Cake

20th century, Large Cakes

An unusual and simple cake, with the bonus of being gluten-free!

As I was perusing one of my several vintage baking books, I came across this recipe – not in any specific allergy-related book or even chapter of a book. No, it was just included with a bunch of other recipes in a book aimed at the commercial baker, dating from the early 20th century. I have scaled the recipe down from the originally huge quantities, but otherwise, it is unchanged.

This cake is made using potato flour. IMPORTANT: Potato flour is made from RAW potatoes and is a bright white and very fine powder, with no discernible taste. It is NOT dehydrated cooked potato, which is coarse, yellowish and tastes of potato. That makes mashed potatoes when reconstituted and will add a similar texture to your cake. Readers in the US: use potato starch flour.

At first, I thought the cake got its name from it colour, because, as you can see from the photo, it is indeed a very pale cake. However, after tasting the cake, I’m now of the opinion that its name comes from its texture. It has the same quality of settled snow, in that there is a thin ‘crust’ on the top and soft, friable, almost powder-like substance underneath. The cake dissolves in the mouth – but in a different way to, say, Melting Moments. It’s incredibly light and tender and is best enjoyed simply, where it can really shine.

That said, the cream that I have teamed with it is pretty awesome itself. It is a variation of the filling I used for the mille-feuilles in the final of The Great British Bake Off. The mixture of sweetened cream cheese and whipped double cream is given a firmer set by the addition of gelatine, which helps to hold in the moisture and makes for a very luscious, rich, creamy and mousse-like texture. Just to continue the frozen theme, it’s like the very best soft-serve ice-cream, without the cold.

I’ve brightened the filling with some Apricot Jam, but any other sharp jam would also work well.

I bought the potato flour at Holland & Barrett.

Snow Cake

112g unsalted butter – softened
112g caster sugar
2 large eggs
zest of 1 lemon
2 level tsp baking powder
225g potato flour

Preheat the oven to 170°C, 150°C Fan.
Grease and line the base of a 20cm diameter, tall cake tin – not a sandwich tin. The high sides will help shield the cake from the direct heat of the oven and keep it from becoming over-coloured.
Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy – 5-10 minutes.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating well each time.
Add the remaining ingredients and beat thoroughly – a good 5-10 minutes. Ordinarily, you’d run the risk of over-beating a cake mixture, which would develop the gluten in the flour, leading to a tough cake. Since the potato flour has no gluten, there’s no need to worry about this. You want to try and get as much air into the mixture as possible to make for a light texture in the cooked cake.
Turn the mixture into the prepared tin and smooth the surface.
Bake for 20 minutes, then turn the tin 180 degrees and bake for a further 10-15 minutes, for a total of 30-35 minutes. When you turn the cake after 20 minutes, slip a sheet of baking parchment over the top of the tin to keep the colour from getting too dark.
When cooked, remove from the oven and let rest for 10 minutes, then remove from the tin and cool on a wire rack.

Luscious Cream Filling

50ml double cream
50g caster sugar
2 leaves gelatine

1tsp vanilla extract
150g cream cheese, room temperature
250ml double cream

Soak the leaves of gelatine in cold water for 15 minutes.
Warm the double cream and caster sugar until the sugar is dissolved.
Shake off the excess water from the gelatine and add to the pan.
Stir until the gelatine has melted, then remove from the heat and set aside.
Once the mixture has cooled a little, pour it into a bowl and add the remaining ingredients.
Whip the mixture until the cream has thickened and it is soft and pillowy.

To Assemble

Even though this is a light sponge cake, the weight of the top half will be too heavy initially, to avoid squidging (technical term) the cream out of the sides of the cake. Therefore, I strongly recommend using the following method to assemble your cake.

200g apricot jam – warmed and pureed

Using cocktail sticks, mark the midpoint of the cooled cake around the edge and cut it horizontally.
Spread the cut side of each cake half with apricot jam.
Put the bottom half of the cake back into the tin in which it was baked.
Slip a band of parchment or food-grade acetate around the inside of the tin, between the cake and the inside of the tin.
Smooth or pipe the cream filling over the bottom of the cake, making sure it reaches the edges of the cake.
Place the other half on top and press gently.
Cover with cling-film and chill for 2-3 hours, until the gelatine in the cream has set.
Remove from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature.
Remove the cake from the tin and gently peel the parchment/acetate from around the filling.
Smooth with a knife if necessary.
Dust with icing sugar to serve.

Tunbridge Cakes

17th century, Biscuits

Here’s another recipe resurrection, but I’ll give you fair warning, it’s a little caraway-heavy. If you’re not a fan of the taste of caraway, then you’re not going to have a fun time.

The solution to that, of course, would be to substitute a different flavouring for the caraway – easy-peasy – aniseed or cumin if you want to keep it seedy, or lemon/orange zest to make it fresh but really, anything that appeals is fine.

ANYHOO – back to the cakes.

Despite the name, Tunbridge Cakes are actually a biscuit. In the mid nineteenth century, Alfred Romary set up a biscuit factory in the town and the biscuits were manufactured for over a hundred years. Queen Victoria was so delighted with them she awarded a royal warrant and the royal connection continued until the final batch was baked for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981.

The advertisements for the biscuits described them as being “As thin as lace, of a flavour so delicate as to be indefinable. The clubs serve them with port, but they are also excellent with ices or at afternoon tea. Many people prefer them to sweets and chocolate. In two flavours, Sweet and Ginger.” Interestingly, there’s no mention of caraway, nor does it appear on the ingredients list on the tins, which mention only flour, butter, shortening, sugar and salt. George Read’s “The complete biscuit and gingerbread baker’s assistant” (1854) makes a distinction between ‘Water Cakes with Caraways’ and ‘Tunbridge Water Cakes’, though whether these bear any resemblance to the Romary biscuits is unclear.

Tunbridge Cakes actually go back much further than mere Victorian times. Recipe books from the early half of the nineteenth century contain several mentions of Tunbridge Cakes, although, on closer examination. they all appear to be plagiarised copies of Mrs Eliza Rundell’s 1806 recipe. The earliest printed recipe I could find just managed to sidle into the eighteenth century – John Perkins’ 1796 recipe for Tunbridge Wafer Cakes. However, in my favourite recipe collection, that of the manuscripts of The Wellcome Library, I found not one but four recipes more than one hundred years older than any I could find in print.

Sample Recipe — Source: MSMSL2, Wellcome Library Collection

Since the recipes were so similar, with only slight variations in proportions of flour, butter, sugar, eggs and seeds, baking a batch of each was the only way they could be fairly compared. I managed to scale down the recipes to a common quantity of flour, and then mixed and baked a batch of each.

It was immediately apparent that two of the batches stood out as being superior, but for different reasons. Batch A was incredibly light and delicate, friable and crumbly in texture, whilst the flavour of Batch B had that elusive je ne sais quoi deliciousness that was difficult to place, without knowing what the ingredients were. My dilemma was: I couldn’t decide which I liked better. Batch B was very heavy on the caraway seeds, but the background spices kept me coming back to nibble. The delicate texture of Batch A was a delight.

In the end I added the extra flavourings from Batch B to the mix of Batch A and baked a hybrid that seemed to being the best of both batches. If you want to try the original recipe, simply omit the optional flavourings in the ingredients listed below.

“Yes, but even after all the yaddah, yaddah, yaddah, they still don’t look very interesting” I hear you say. I know. They’ve not got much wow factor to look at, and if you’ve read this far, you might even be wondering why you should bother with them at all. So allow me to try and convince you. Firstly, their taste – the most basic quality for a recipe – they are delicious, and this should be reason enough. If you need further convincing, it would be their delicate texture: crisp, crumbly and friable. And lastly, and for me this is their most enchanting quality, their age. Late 17th century. To put this in context, contemporaneous events include the English civil war, Roundheads & Cavaliers, Oliver Cromwell, the Great Fire of London, Peter The Great crowned Czar of Russia and the Salem witch trials are conducted in Massachusetts. And this is a delicious biscuit from those times. As Sue Perkins so eloquently put it in her Foreword for my first book, it’s taste-bud time travel!

Apart from the flavourings, the other key aspect of these biscuits is their thinness. And I mean thin. Really, really thin. Like 2mm. Even though the quantity of dough is small, I strongly suggest working with just half of it at a time, so that you can really concentrate on getting the dough as thin as possible. It will become translucent when rolled thinly enough. The biscuits will then take only minutes to bake.

Tunbridge Cakes

Based on recipes in The Wellcome Library 17th century manuscripts, dated 1650-1700

113g plain flour
23g unsalted butter
34g powdered sugar
1 large egg yolk
½tsp caraway seeds
½tsp ground ginger – optional
¼tsp salt – optional
50-70ml double cream to mix

Put the flour, butter, sugar and egg yolk into a food processor and blitz together to mix.
Tip mixture into a bowl and add the caraway seeds, ginger and salt, if using.
Stir together.
Gradually add the cream until the mixture comes together into a stiff paste.,
Tip the paste out of the bowl and knead smooth. The texture should be like a firm shortcrust pastry.
Wrap in plastic and chill for 1 hour.
Preheat the oven to 180°C, 160°C Fan.
Retrieve the paste from the fridge, divide in half and put one half back into the fridge to stay cool.
Lightly flour the work surface and a rolling pin and roll out the dough extremely thinly, until translucent and the work surface is visible through it.
Using a fork, dock (i.e. poke holes in) the whole surface of the paste. This is a little time consuming, but infinitely better than trying to dock the biscuits once they have been cut out.
Cut out biscuits using a plain, 8cm cutter.
Transfer the biscuits to baking sheets lined with parchment paper.
Bake for 4-6 minutes, until the edges are just beginning to brown. Check after 3 minutes and turn the baking sheet around if the biscuits are colouring unevenly.
Remove the biscuits from the baking sheet and cool on a wire rack.
Store in an airtight container.

Whitsun Cake

19th century, 20th century, Yeast

Wotchers!

Time was, we used to mark the passing of the year with festivals and their associated foods. The list of celebrations that have continued into the 21st century is a lot shorter than it used to be: pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, Simnel Cake on Mothering Sunday, Cross Buns on Good Friday are about all that remain in national consciousness.

Regionally, there are still pockets of celebration peculiar to that particular area. Whilst researching my book (shameless plug) Great British Bakes, I discovered two such celebrations with which I have a personal connection.

The first was that of Pax Cakes at King’s Capel, near Ross-on-Wye, where my father spend his final years and is now buried. Under the terms of the sixteenth century will of Lady Scudamore, cakes and ale were to be distributed to the parishioners of Hentland, Sellack and King’s Capel on Palm Sunday, to be consumed in church with the aim of fostering good will and letting the grievances of the past year be forgotten. The cakes became known as Pax Cakes and the toast/blessing was “Peace and good neighbourhood”.

The second was the celebration at Kidderminster, where I now live, held on Midsummer Eve, for all residents of Church Street. A bequest left by John Brecknell in 1778 added to an earlier bequest and provided cake for each child or unmarried woman born or living in the street. The men-folk were to gather together to oversee the distribution, and for this meeting both beer and tobacco were paid for by the bequest. Old quarrels had to be set aside in order for the meeting to proceed. Over the years, the celebration evolved into a Midsummer’s Even dinner for residents of the street, where the toast was “Peace and good neighbourhood”.

All of which leads me to this week’s recipe found in my grandmother’s cookery book. It’s for a cake to celebrate Whitsun, originating from Lincolnshire. The recipe was very insistent that, after baking, the cake be wrapped and carefully stored for “several days” in order for the flavours to mingle. The first time I made it, I dismissed this notion, as the aroma was so tantalising, and indeed, it was absolutely delicious, warm from the oven. This time I decided to follow the instructions as written, purely to compare taste. Long story short, although the cake I unwrapped this morning was nice, I still prefer the cake fresh and warm. The flavour is akin to an Eccles or Banbury cake, but with an enriched dough taking the place of pastry.

This recipe makes two, 20cm cakes. You can either do your own taste test, by eating one warm and trying the second several days later, or make just one cake by halving the recipe.

There’s no indication, other than the recipe title, what exactly this cake was meant to symbolise or celebrate, so whether you choose to make one cake or two, Peace and Good Neighbourhood to you!

Lincolnshire Whitsun Cake

Makes two 20cm diameter cakes.

170g unsalted butter
¼tsp salt
625g strong plain flour
2 sachets fast-action yeast

170g unsalted butter
300ml milk

450g currants
450g soft light brown sugar
60g butter
1 large egg yolk
2 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp allspice

1 large egg white for glazing
caster sugar

Grease and line with parchment paper two 20cm loose-bottom or spring-form cake tins. Tart tins are not suitable, as the sides need to be relatively high because of the cakes rising both before and during cooking.
Put the first four ingredients into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Tip the mixture into a bowl.
Gently warm the butter and milk together until the butter has melted.
Allow to cool to blood temperature, then add to the flour mixture. It will form a very soft dough.
Knead for 10 minutes, then set aside to rise for 30 minutes.
Mix the fruit, sugar, yolk, butter and spices together in a saucepan and warm through until moist and the fruit soft.
After 30 minutes, divide the dough into two and then each half into four equal pieces.
Divide the fruit filling into six
Pat each piece of dough into a circle of diameter 20cm and place in the prepared tins, alternating with layers of the fruit mixture. The top layer will be of dough.
Set tins aside to rise for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180°C, 160°C Fan.
Bake the cakes for 30 minutes, then remove and quickly brush them with the beaten egg-white and sprinkle with caster sugar.
Return to the oven and bake for a further 25-30 minutes, until the top is browned and the cakes have shrunk away from the sides of the tin a little.
Cool in the tins for 10 minutes, then remove and cool on a wire rack.
Eat warm, or wait until completely cold before wrapping tightly in foil and storing in a tin, or wrap in plastic and freeze for later.

Easter Simnel

17th century, Yeast

Wotchers!

We’re back to the history books this week, with an original Simnel recipe from the 1650s. And yes, I’m exactly a week late, since they were originally enjoyed on Mid-Lent Sunday, which has, over the years, segued into Mothering Sunday/Mothers’ Day. Still, they were popular throughout the Easter celebrations, so there’s still time to rustle some up if you feel inspired.

Three regions of Britain lay claim to strong Simnel traditions: Devizes in Wiltshire, Bury in Lancashire and Shrewsbury in Shropshire. The Devises Simnel is recorded as being star-shaped and without a crust, and the Bury Simnel is traditionally flat, but the Shrewsbury Simnel was the most popular and which went on to develop into the Easter cake we know today.

The Shrewsbury Simnel of 350 years ago was much different to the traditional almond-paste-filled cake made today. Originally, it was an enriched and fruited yeast dough wrapped in a plain, yeasted dough,and then boiled before being baked, in a method similar to the way modern bagels are made. There are similarities with today’s Scottish Black Bun, the difference being both the use of unleavened pastry and the much richer filling of the northern version.

simnel cakes — Shrewsbury Simnels, from The Book of Days, Robert Chambers, 1863, Volume 1, p3

15thC simnels — Sketches of an early Tudor Symnelle (from A Pictorial Vocabulary of the 15th Century, in “A Volume of Vocabularies! by Thomas Wright, 1857, p266)

Whilst descriptions and images of what Simnels looked like are well known, recipes have, to a great extent, been either extremely vague or pretty much guess-work, as all the original recipes have vanished over the years.

Until now.

For, as I was browsing through the digitised 17th century manuscripts of The Wellcome Library, I found a recipe for a Simnell. It’s made in the traditional manner of first boiling then baking, and someone has subsequently crossed it out, but it’s still legible and much older than anything I’ve been able to find until now, so in terms of authenticity, that’s good enough for me.

SimnelRecipe — Simnel recipe from The Wellcome Library’s digitised 17th century manuscripts collection

It’s a little sparse on quantities and details such as cooking times and temperatures, but there was enough for me to muddle along with my own interpretation. Interestingly, there’s no mention of the traditional saffron flavouring, these cakes being ‘gilded’ with egg-yolk glaze only, so maybe the use of this spice was a later development.

It also fails to mention what size these festive cakes were. There’s anecdotal evidence from several 19th century sources, that claim Shrewsbury Simnels were made in all sizes from miniature up to cushion size, and also of them being sent all over the country as gifts. One account tells of a bemused recipient using hers as a footstool, not being aware that there was a delicious cake within the double-cooked crust. I opted for pork-pie-sized cakes for a couple of reasons:

The recipe says to “take it upon the back of your hand and pinch it” – difficult for a large sized cake.
The baking instructions are “bake them as cakes or small bread” – so bread roll size rather than loaf sized.
Mention I found of cymlings or simnels in the notes of early American settlers on the local vegetation.
- In 1690, the Reverend John Banister recorded in his Natural History [of Virginia]
We plant also Cucumbers & Pompions, the common, & the Indian kind with a long narrow neck, which from them we call a Cushaw. Of Melopepones or the lesser sort of Pompions there is also great variety, all which go by the Indian name of Macocks; yet the Clypeatae are sometimes called Simnels & because these others also from the Lenten Cake of that name which some of them very much resemble.
- Earlier, in A Description of New Albion (1648), Beauchamp Plantagenet (what an AWESOME name!) observed “strawberries, mulberries, symnels, maycocks, and horns, like cucumbers” on Palmer’s Isle (now called Garrett Island) at the northern end of Chesapeake Bay.

The vegetable they both refer to is nowadays more commonly called the pattypan squash.

The recipe below will make four, individual-sized Simnels. Feel free to enrich the filling for the dough even more by adding extra fruit, spice peel, sugar, butter and eggs. The mix below, however, will make a delicately spiced and fruited tea bread that is delicious on its own as well as spread with butter and/or toasted. Provided your Simnels don’t burst their seams during baking, the hard outer dough will ensure that they keep very well for a couple of weeks.

Shrewsbury Simnels

For the plain dough:

250g white bread flour
0.5tsp salt
0.5tsp mace
0.5tsp nutmeg
0.25tsp cloves
1/2 sachet easy-blend, fast-action yeast
warm water to mix

Sift the flour, salt, spices and yeast into a bowl.
Slowly add enough warm water to bring the ingredients together into a firm dough.
Knead for 10 minutes.
Put into an oiled bowl and cover with plastic film.
Set aside to rise for 1 hour.

For the filling dough:

250g white bread flour
0.5tsp salt
0.5tsp mace
0.5tsp nutmeg
0.25tsp cloves
1/2 sachet easy-blend, fast-action yeast
1 large egg
60ml double cream
50g butter
2tbs sugar

100g raisins
100g currants

2 large egg yolks for glazing.

Sift the flour, salt, spices and yeast into a bowl.
Cut the butter into small pieces and put into a pan with the cream and the sugar.
Warm gently until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved
Whisk the egg and add to the warmed ingredients. NB Make sure they aren’t so hot that they cook the egg.
Add the liquid ingredients to the flour mixture and knead for 10 minutes.
Put into an oiled bowl and cover with plastic film.
Set aside to rise for 1 hour.
Put a large pan of water on the cooker to boil. I use my preserving pan. Do it now because it will take practically the whole hour to come to heat up.
When the dough has doubled in size, knead in the raisins and currants.

To assemble the cakes:

Divide the plain dough into 8 even pieces and roll each piece out thinly (3mm).
Line 4 small deep pie/tart tins with cling film. This will help turn out the finished cakes.
Use 4 pieces of plain dough to line the tart tins. Leave the excess dough hanging over the edge of the tins, as it will help in forming a good seal around the cake dough.
Chill in the fridge together with the remaining pieces of dough, which will form the lids, for 20 minutes. This chilling will firm up the dough and make it easier to form the crust on the cakes.
Divide the fruit dough into four and knead until firm and smooth. If you’ve added extra fruit or your tins are on the small side, you may need to reduce the size of the dough balls.
Remove the chilled dough from the fridge. It is best to form one cake and then place it in the hot water immediately. If left to one side while you make the other cakes, the dough will warm up, rise and potentially burst its seals.
Place a ball of fruit dough in each tin.
Moisten the edges of the dough with water and cover with one of the dough lids.
Press firmly and pinch together to form a seal around the fruit filling. Trim any excess dough.
Crimp the edges of the cake according to your own design.
Fill a large bowl with cold water.
When the water is simmering, place each cake on a skimmer and slowly lower into the water. It will sink to the bottom of the pan initially. When the cake rises, use a skimmer to gently turn it over so that the lid cooks for about a minute.
Lift the cake from the hot water and lower it gently into the bowl of cold water.
When cooled, set the cake onto a silicon sheet (so that it doesn’t stick) to dry.
Repeat for the remaining cakes.
Preheat the oven to 170°C, 150°C Fan.
Line a baking sheet with parchment.
Place the Simnels onto the baking sheet.
Brush with beaten egg-yolk to glaze.
Bake for 45-50 minutes until firm and golden. They should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. Don’t be tempted to take them out too early, even with the dip in the hot water, these will take a relatively long time to bake.
Cool on a wire rack.