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Cake Confectionery and Little Sweets: Bake
CHOCOLATE NUT WAFERS Cream together one-half cupful of butter with one cupful of sugar, add two well-beaten eggs, and two squares of grated chocolate melted in one-fourth cupful of hot water. Sift with two-thirds cup of flour one teaspoonful of baking-powder, and a pinch of soda. Pour very thinly over well-greased pans, and sprinkle generously over with chopped nut meats. Bake in a moderate oven, and cut into small squares or diamonds.
LADY FINGERS Beat five eggs up until light, add one-half cupful of powdered sugar and beat up for several minutes; sift in with one cupful of flour one teaspoonful of baking-powder and stir slowly. Place the batter in a pastry bag and run it out through the tube on light brown paper (not buttered), making each cake about a finger in length, and about one-fourth inch wide; be careful not to get them too wide. Sprinkle with granulated sugar, bake in a quick oven. Place the paper on a damp table and let stand a few moments and the cakes can be readily removed. Stick the cakes together back to back; this will make them round like fingers. If liked a little jelly may be spread between the cakes before putting them together.
Two sheet-pan cookies from the era before parchment paper and standardized chocolate. Both are quick, but both depend on getting the batter thin and the timing short.
- Two squares of chocolateBaking chocolate was sold in one-ounce squares, so this is 2 oz unsweetened chocolate. Grating it first is only to help it melt in the small amount of hot water; chopping fine does the same job.
- Moderate oven350F for the chocolate wafers. Spread thin, they will be done in 10-12 minutes and go bitter quickly if left longer.
- Quick ovenFor the lady fingers, roughly 400-425F by period usage; 400F is the safer choice in a modern even-heating oven. They want 6-8 minutes: set and barely coloured at the edges, pale on top.
- Cut the wafers hotThis is the hinge of the first recipe. Score and cut into squares or diamonds within a minute or two of the pan leaving the oven. Once the sheet cools it shatters instead of cutting.
- Brown paperUnbuttered kraft or butcher paper was the standard piping surface. Parchment works and needs no damp-table trick; if you use plain paper, the steam from a wet counter loosens the cakes as described.
- Baking powder in lady fingersClassic French boudoirs use no leavening at all, relying on the beaten eggs. The teaspoon here is a departure from that practice and will give a slightly cakier, less crisp finger.
- Piping sizeA quarter inch wide is narrower than most modern lady fingers, and the recipe is emphatic about not letting them get wider. Use a small plain tip, pipe finger lengths, and leave space between them; they spread.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. The wafer batter is small and will cover one large pan in a thin layer; the five-egg lady finger batter makes a substantial number of cakes, halved once they are sandwiched back to back.
Lady fingers are the plainest survivor of the old biscuit family — batters raised on beaten egg alone, piped rather than rolled — and they go under various names across Europe: savoiardi in Italy, boudoirs and biscuits à la cuiller in France, the last of these recalling the spoon used before pastry bags were common. Their appearance in a home candy-making book is a reminder that American confectionery manuals of the period drew no firm line between sweets and small baking; a pastry bag, a sheet of brown paper and a hot oven were considered part of the same repertoire as fondant and caramels. The chocolate nut wafers belong to a later moment, dependent on milled baking chocolate and chemical leavening both being cheap and reliable household staples.