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Rice Cakes, Plain
No. 1.--Rub half a pound of butter into one pound of flour. Add one pound of ground rice, a small pinch of salt, three heaped tea-spoonfuls of baking-powder, half a pound of sugar, one pound of picked and dried currants, and two ounces of candied peel. When the dry ingredients are thoroughly mixed stir in four well-beaten eggs and a tea-cupful of milk. Bake the cake immediately in a well-heated oven. Probable cost, 2s. 8d. Time, according to size. When a skewer can be pushed to the bottom in the centre of the cake, and be brought out clean and bright, the cake is done enough. No. 2.--Beat four ounces of butter to a cream. Add half a pound of sugar, three beaten eggs stirred in gradually, a quarter of a pound of picked and dried currants, a quarter of a pound of candied peel, half a pound of ground rice, a quarter of a pound of flour. When these ingredients are thoroughly mixed, bake immediately. Probable cost, 1s. 5d. No. 3.--Rub six ounces of butter into three-quarters of a pound of rice-flour. Add five ounces of sugar, two table-spoonfuls of currants, a tea-spoonful of candied peel chopped very small, half a small tea-spoonful of soda dissolved in half a tea-cupful of luke-warm milk, and three eggs well whisked. Beat these ingredients thoroughly for a few minutes, and bake the cake immediately, in a well-heated oven. Probable cost, 1s. 2d.
Three versions of the same idea, in descending order of richness. All are heavy fruit batters leaned on ground rice rather than flour alone, and all assume you know how to judge your own oven.
- Ground rice and rice-flourBoth terms here mean milled rice, ground rice being slightly coarser and rice flour fine; the Asian-market fine white rice flour works for either. Do not use glutinous (sweet) rice flour, which behaves completely differently.
- Oven temperatureA "well-heated oven" is not a fixed figure; for a fruited cake of this size somewhere around 350F is a reasonable modern reading, since much hotter sets and colours the crust before the dense, egg-heavy middle catches up.
- TimingNo. 1 is a very large cake, close to 5 lb of mixture all told; in an 8-9 inch deep tin allow 1 1/4 to 1 3/4 hours. Nos. 2 and 3 are about half that and will take 50-70 minutes in a 7-8 inch tin. The skewer test in the original is still the right test.
- No. 2 has no raising agentThat is not an omission. It relies on butter creamed with sugar and three eggs beaten in gradually, so beat properly and get air in, or it bakes flat and close. It is meant to be a firm, dense cake.
- Soda in No. 3Half a small teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda dissolved in warm milk, with no acid ingredient in the mix, gives only weak lift and can leave a soapy edge. Modern practice would use baking powder at about 1 1/2 teaspoons for the same weight of dry ingredients.
- Bake immediatelyRepeated in all three for good reason. Once the baking powder or soda meets liquid, the gas starts going; ground rice batters also stiffen quickly as the starch takes up milk.
- Preparing the fruit"Picked and dried" currants means gone over for stalks and grit, washed, and dried thoroughly, since wet fruit sinks. Tossing the currants in a spoonful of the measured flour helps keep them suspended.
- Candied peelNo. 2 uses a quarter pound, which is a great deal by current taste; halve it if you want the rice and butter to show. Buy peel in whole pieces and chop it yourself rather than using the pre-diced kind.
- Tin and yieldLine the tin with parchment, base and sides. No. 1 gives a large cake serving 12-16; Nos. 2 and 3 serve 8-10.
Ground rice was a staple of the Victorian store cupboard, cheap, keeping well, and used in puddings, blancmanges and cakes where it gives a distinctive short, slightly sandy crumb quite unlike a wheat-flour sponge. Cassell's habit of printing three numbered versions with a "probable cost" for each reflects the book's readership: the same cake at 2s. 8d., 1s. 5d. and 1s. 2d. The word "plain" here is relative and technical rather than a description of taste, marking the cake off from richer iced or almond-paste versions rather than suggesting anything austere about half a pound of sugar and a pound of currants. Rice flour was by then ordinary enough in British baking to need no explanation to the reader.