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Rink Cake
Take three-quarters of a pound of fresh butter, beat it up, and add to it three-quarters of a pound of sugar, one pound of flour, the yolks of seven eggs and the whites of four beaten to a snow. When these ingredients are thoroughly incorporated, butter a sheet of white paper, and spread the paste upon it rather thinly; have ready some almonds blanched and slice; lay them upon the paste in rows, strewing currants between; strew sifted sugar over the whole. When the cake is baked of a light-brown colour, cut it into squares while warm, in such a way that there will be almonds and currants on each square. Remove the paper quickly.
A creamed butter cake baked as a single thin sheet, then cut into squares while still warm. Almost everything about the result depends on how thinly it is spread and how promptly it is cut.
- Weights in cupsThree-quarters of a pound of butter is 3 sticks (340 g); three-quarters of a pound of sugar is about 1 2/3 cups; a pound of flour is roughly 3 1/2 cups scooped and levelled. Weighing is safer here, as the batter is stiff and small errors show.
- No leavening, by designThere is no baking powder and no liquid beyond the eggs. The lift comes entirely from creaming the butter and sugar well and from the four whites beaten to a firm snow, folded in last. Beat the butter and sugar until visibly pale before the yolks go in.
- The buttered paperSubstitute parchment on a half-sheet pan. Buttering it is still worth doing, since the sugar strewn over the top will run down the edges and stick. The instruction to remove the paper quickly belongs to the plain white paper of the original; with parchment the squares lift away without hurry.
- Spread thinlyAbout 1/4 inch (6 mm) is right. Any thicker and the middle stays soft while the almonds scorch; the cake is meant to bake fast and be cut into small, biscuit-like squares.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction. For a thin sheet, 350F (175C) for roughly 20-25 minutes, until light brown, works. Watch the almonds rather than the clock.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants. They are smaller and drier than raisins; a brief soak in warm water and a thorough pat dry keeps them from burning on the exposed surface.
- AlmondsBlanched and sliced means whole almonds skinned in boiling water and cut lengthwise into thin slivers. Commercial flaked almonds are thinner and will darken faster, so check earlier.
- CuttingScore and cut while warm. Once cold the cake shatters rather than slices, and the point of the rows of almonds and currants is that each square carries its share.
- YieldTwo-inch squares work out at roughly 50 to a half-sheet pan, but this quantity of batter spread at 1/4 inch will cover more than one such pan.
The name is often said to point to the skating rinks that spread through British and American towns from the 1870s, when roller skating became a fashionable middle-class amusement with its own halls, bands and refreshment rooms; a cake cut into small squares and eaten from the hand suits that setting better than a sliced loaf, though the derivation is a guess rather than a documented one. Cassell's, compiled in the nineteenth century for households with a cook but not a French chef, is full of such things: a plain rich butter paste dressed up with almonds and currants and a dusting of sugar, requiring no piping and no shaped tin. The technique of baking a thin sheet on buttered paper and cutting it warm is much older than the name, and thin tray-baked almond slices and Dutch speculaas-style sheets are made in a broadly similar way.