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QUEEN CAKES (another way) (Put half a pound of fine flour)
Put half a pound of fine flour into a bowl. Mix with it a small pinch of salt, half a pound of loaf sugar, pounded and sifted, six ounces of currants, picked and dried, and a flavouring of either powdered cinnamon, grated nutmeg, grated lemon-rind, or pounded almonds. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly. Cut half a pound of fresh butter into small pieces, beat to a cream, and add gradually five well-beaten eggs, two table-spoonfuls of rose-water or brandy, and the strained juice of a lemon. Stir the flour, spice, etc., gradually into this mixture, and beat the batter for several minutes. Butter some queen-cake tins, half fill them with the batter, and bake in a brisk oven. When done enough, turn them out, and place them upside down to cool. If liked, these cakes may be coated with icing after they are baked. To do this put the white of an egg into a bowl, and mix gradually with it a quarter of a pound of finely-sifted loaf sugar, and a dessert-spoonful of lemon-juice, and work these together with a spoon until the paste is white, shining, and thick. Spread a little of this upon the cakes, and put in a cool oven, or in a warm screen, to dry. Time to bake the cakes, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probable cost, 2s. 2d.
A rich pound-cake batter in miniature, made without chemical leavening. Everything depends on how much air you beat into the butter and eggs.
- The hinge: air is the only raising agentThere is no baking powder here, so the lift comes entirely from creaming the butter and sugar and from the five well-beaten eggs. Beat the butter until pale and light, and add the eggs a little at a time to avoid curdling.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up as needed; pounded and sifted, it becomes something close to what we call caster sugar. Use caster in the cake batter; for the quarter pound in the icing, icing (confectioners') sugar is the closer match.
- A brisk ovenBrisk means hot but not fierce: about 400F (200C). Small cakes of this size need the heat to set the outside before the butter runs, and fifteen to twenty minutes at that temperature is right.
- Queen-cake tinsSmall individual tins, often heart- or diamond-shaped, roughly the size of a modern bun or muffin cup. A twelve-hole bun tin or paper cases work; keep to the instruction to fill them only half full, as the batter rises more than its lack of leavening suggests.
- Rose-waterModern rose-water varies enormously in strength. Two tablespoons of a delicate brand is right for this quantity, but a concentrated one will taste of soap; start with one and taste the batter.
- The lemon juiceWith no soda in the mixture the juice is there for flavour and to cut the richness, not for lift.
- The icingThis is plain royal icing, dried rather than baked. A cool oven means around 200-250F (100-120C) with the door ajar; the intent is only to set the surface. Note that the white is never properly cooked, so use pasteurised egg white if serving anyone who should avoid raw egg.
- YieldHalf a pound each of flour, sugar and butter with five eggs makes roughly twenty to twenty-four small cakes. They keep two or three days in a tin and are better on the second day.
Queen cakes were a fixture of British baking from the eighteenth century onward: a small, rich, currant-studded cake baked in individual tins, traditionally heart-shaped, and turned out to cool upside down. The formula is a pound cake in miniature -- equal weights of flour, sugar and butter bound with eggs -- and its appearance in Cassell's under "another way" shows how many household variants were in circulation by the 1870s, differing mainly in the flavouring: cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon peel, almonds, rose-water or brandy. Rose-water in particular is a survival from earlier English confectionery, where it did the work that vanilla later took over. The small tin is often said to lie behind the later fairy cake and, by way of American baking, the cupcake, though the line of descent is disputed. The costing of 2s. 2d. is characteristic of Cassell's, whose prices are generally taken to have allowed a mistress to check her cook's accounts.