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Langues De Chat Biscuits
Beat six ounces of sugar with three eggs in a basin for five minutes, then add three more eggs. When frothy mix in six ounces of flour and one pound of melted butter, then add two table-spoonfuls of whipped cream. Put this preparation into a forcing bag, and squeeze it on to a buttered and floured tin in the shape of small finger biscuits. Let them remain for five minutes, then cook in a hot oven. They can be flavoured with vanilla or any other desired flavouring.
A late-Victorian version of the French langue de chat, workable once you deal with one figure that cannot be right as printed.
- The pound of butter is almost certainly an errorSix ounces of sugar and six ounces of flour against a full pound of butter gives a batter that is more than half fat; it will run off the tray and fry rather than bake. Read it as six ounces of melted butter, in balance with the sugar and flour, which is the standard proportion for these biscuits.
- Six eggs is also generousWith 6 oz each of sugar, flour and butter, two to three eggs will give a pipeable batter. Add them one at a time and stop when the mixture holds a soft ribbon; more than that and the biscuits spread into lace.
- Hot ovenThe book gives no temperatures; read "hot" as somewhere around 400 to 425F. Langues de chat need 5 to 8 minutes only, until the rims are brown and the centres still pale. They colour from the edge in, and the browning happens fast at the end.
- Forcing bagA piping bag with a plain round tip of about 1/3 inch. Pipe strips two to three inches long, well apart, as the batter spreads to roughly double its piped width.
- The five-minute restThe recipe has the piped strips stand before baking; a short rest lets the melted butter firm a little, which may help them hold their shape.
- Buttered and floured tinButter and flour works, but baking parchment or a silicone mat is more reliable; these biscuits are thin and tear when lifted from bare metal.
- Lift them warmTake them off the tray within a minute of leaving the oven. Once cold they weld to the sheet and shatter. If you want them curled, drape them over a rolling pin while still hot.
- YieldSeveral dozen finger biscuits of three inches, working from the reduced quantities suggested above. They keep about a week in an airtight tin and go soft quickly in a humid kitchen.
Langue de chat means "cat's tongue" -- a description of the shape, a flat oval tapering at both ends, rather than of any ingredient. The biscuit belongs to the French repertoire of petits fours secs, the dry, thin, keeping biscuits sent out with ices, creams and after-dinner coffee. The batter is essentially equal weights of butter, sugar and flour loosened with egg, a family of proportions shared with tuiles and cigarettes russes; the difference is largely in how it is piped and how it is handled coming out of the oven. The whipped cream here may be intended to add a little lightness to a mixture that has no chemical raising at all.