Home › The Principles of Cookery › Hazel-Nut Cakes
Hazel-Nut Cakes
Mince two ounces of hazel-nuts and half an ounce of sweet almonds very finely. Add three ounces of pounded and sifted sugar, the white of an egg, beaten to a firm froth, and as much flour as will bind them together. Roll the paste out till it is a quarter of an inch thick, stamp it out in small round cakes, place these on well-buttered tins, and bake in a slow oven. Time, twenty minutes to bake. Probable cost, 4d. Sufficient for six or eight cakes.
A small-batch nut macaroon stiffened with just enough flour to roll and stamp. The hinge is restraint with the flour: add only what it takes to hold the paste together, or the cakes turn dry and biscuity.
- Slow ovenRead this as 300F (150C). At that heat twenty minutes dries the cakes through and sets them pale; they should barely colour at the edges.
- Pounded and sifted sugarThis is caster (superfine) sugar. Granulated will work if you pulse it briefly in a grinder, but it dissolves less readily in a single egg white and can leave the surface gritty.
- Sweet almondsThe Victorian distinction was from bitter almonds, which contain amygdalin. Ordinary blanched almonds are the sweet kind; use half an ounce, about 15 g, or roughly a scant two tablespoons whole.
- The hazelnutsTwo ounces is about 55 g, a generous third of a cup. The recipe says only to mince them finely; modern practice is to toast them at 325F for 8-10 minutes and rub off the skins in a towel first. Grind or mince finely but stop short of a paste, or the oil will loosen the mixture.
- How much flourDeliberately unmeasured, and it depends on how oily your nuts ground. Start with a tablespoon and add by the teaspoon until the paste just comes away from the bowl. Two to three tablespoons is typical.
- Egg whiteOne large white beaten to firm peaks. Fold it in rather than stir, then let the paste rest ten minutes so the flour hydrates before you roll it.
- Rolling and stampingThe paste is tacky. Roll it between sheets of baking parchment to a quarter inch, chill briefly, then stamp with a round cutter. Note that to land on the stated yield of six to eight cakes at that thickness the rounds must be fairly broad, nearer three inches than the small cutter one might expect from "small round cakes."
- Tins and yieldWell-buttered tins means baking sheets; parchment or a silicone mat is safer with this much sugar. Six to eight cakes is a very small batch, easily doubled.
Cassell's places this among a family of nut cakes and macaroons that all descend from the same simple idea: ground nuts, sugar and egg white, with or without flour. Flourless versions belong to the older Italian and French macaroon tradition; adding just enough flour to make a rollable paste, as here, turns the mixture into something that can be stamped out with a cutter like a biscuit. Hazelnuts were a domestic nut and almonds were imported, which may be part of why the proportion here is four parts hazel to one part almond and why the probable cost is only fourpence, though the book does not say so. The almonds add flavour rather than bulk, supplying a marzipan note that hazelnut alone lacks. The phrase "sweet almonds" reflects a period in which bitter almonds were sold separately for flavouring, so that the kind intended was worth specifying.