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Plum Cake, Rich, Icing For
Rich plum cakes are much improved if they are covered with almonds and sugar icing. They may then be used as Twelfth-cakes. The almond paste is made as follows. Blanch and peel half a pound of almonds. Pound them in a mortar to a smooth paste, and whilst pounding add a few drops of orange-flower water to keep them from oiling. Mix with them one pound of powdered and sifted loaf sugar, and add sufficient white of egg to make a soft paste. Bake the cake and let it get cold. Spread the almond paste smoothly over it, and when it is hard cover with sugar icing about a quarter of an inch thick. To make the sugar icing, take the whites of two or, if necessary, three eggs, and do not beat them. Mix with them two pounds of icing sugar to make a stiffish paste that will not run, and add a few drops of lemon-juice occasionally. Mix, but do not work, the icing, and spread it evenly on the cake with the hands, which should have been dipped in cold water, put it in a cool oven or hot-screen until it is dry and hard. Ornament it in any way that fancy suggests. Raised and mottoed ornaments may be fastened upon it, or a small portion of the icing may be made thicker with a little more sugar, and then be squeezed through the small end of a piece of paper twisted in the form of a sugar-bag, to make a piping.
PLUM CHEESE, MADE FROM PLUMS WHICH HAVE BEEN USED FOR JELLY. Skin and stone the plums from which the juice has been strained. Weigh them, and boil them until dry. Mix one pound of powdered loaf sugar with every three pounds of fruit, and boil it again until the pulp leaves the sides of the pan with the spoon. Press it into shallow moulds, cover it as jam is covered, and store in a cool dry place. Time to boil, one hour and a quarter to boil the fruit by itself, half an hour to boil it with the sugar.
Two entries have run together here: the almond paste and royal icing for a rich plum cake, and a plum cheese made from the debris of jelly-making. Both are workable today with a few translations.
- Loaf sugar, powdered and siftedLoaf sugar was cone sugar broken up and pounded at home. "Powdered and sifted loaf sugar" for the almond paste is what we call icing or confectioners' sugar; the two pounds for the icing is the same thing. Modern icing sugar contains a little cornflour, which is harmless here.
- Quantities and coverageHalf a pound of almonds with a pound of sugar gives roughly 1 lb 8 oz of marzipan — enough to cover the top and sides of an 8-inch round cake. Two pounds of icing sugar with two or three whites makes a generous amount of royal icing; halve it for a single-layer coat.
- Pounding the almondsA food processor replaces the mortar, but the warning about oiling is real: almonds will turn to butter if worked too long. Pulse in short bursts, keep the nuts cold, and add the orange-flower water (or a spoonful of the egg white) early rather than late.
- Dry the marzipan before icing"When it is hard" is the hinge. Left a day or two in a cool room, the almond layer forms a skin; iced while still moist, almond oil can bleed through and discolour the white surface.
- Mix, but do not workRoyal icing is deliberately not beaten to a foam here. Over-beating incorporates air bubbles that surface as pits when the icing dries. Stir the sugar into unbeaten whites until smooth; the lemon juice is there to whiten the icing.
- "A cool oven or hot-screen"A hot-screen was a shield set before the fire to dry a surface with gentle radiant heat. Take the instruction as the gentlest heat available — the lowest oven setting, door ajar — or simply leave the cake uncovered overnight in a warm, dry, draught-free room.
- Raw egg whiteNeither the almond paste nor the icing is cooked, and drying does not pasteurise. If the cake is for children, the elderly, or anyone pregnant or immunocompromised, use pasteurised egg white or meringue powder in place of the shell eggs.
- The paper sugar-bagThe twisted-paper cone is still the best tool for fine piping; a baking-parchment cornet with the tip snipped off works exactly as described. Stiffen the reserved icing with extra sugar as the recipe says, or it will slump off the design.
- Plum cheeseA fruit cheese is a paste stiff enough to slice, not a preserve to spoon. The hour and a quarter of dry boiling needs a heavy pan and steady stirring at the end — the pulp scorches readily once it thickens. It is finished when a spoon drawn across the base leaves a channel that holds. Three pounds of pulp with its sugar fills several small moulds; serve with cold meat or hard cheese.
Twelfth-cake was the centrepiece of Twelfth Night, the close of the Christmas season (kept on 5 or 6 January depending on the reckoning) — a rich fruit cake sheeted in almond paste and royal icing and crowned with the elaborate sugar and paper ornaments this entry gestures at. The custom of hiding a bean and a pea in the cake to choose a mock king and queen for the evening is generally traced to much older Epiphany revels, and by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries London confectioners were noted for competing with vast decorated Twelfth-cakes in their windows. By the time Cassell's was compiled the festival was fading in England, its cake largely absorbed into the iced Christmas cake we still make; the entry accordingly treats the whole thing as an optional upgrade — a rich plum cake "may then be used as" a Twelfth-cake, rather than being one from the start. The plum cheese tacked on afterwards belongs to a different instinct entirely — the thrift that refused to throw away a pan of strained fruit pulp when sugar and an afternoon's boiling could turn it into something that kept.