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Sly Cakes
Mix together three-quarters of a pound of flour, one ounce and a half of castor sugar, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of mixed spice; make it into a stiff paste with a little cold water, and roll it out three times, two ounces of fat being spread over it each time as if for pastry. Roll out thinly, and cut into squares or rounds. Take a table-spoonful of currants that have been moistened with rum, and sprinkle them on half the pieces, then cover them in sandwich fashion, brush them over with sugar and water to glaze, and bake in a hot oven. These cakes may be eaten either hot or cold. Probable cost, 1s. per dozen.
A rough-puff pastry turnover in miniature, close cousin to the Banbury and Eccles cake. The method is straightforward provided the fat stays cold and the edges are properly sealed.
- Weights in metricThree-quarters of a pound of flour is about 340 g; an ounce and a half of caster sugar is roughly 40 g. The fat is two ounces (about 55 g) spread at each of three rollings, so 6 oz / 170 g in total.
- The fatCassell leaves it unnamed, which in a late-Victorian kitchen meant butter, lard, or a mixture. Butter gives the better flavour; whichever you use, it must be firm and cold enough to stay in sheets rather than melt into the dough.
- Caster sugar and mixed spiceCaster sugar is superfine sugar. Mixed spice is a British blend leaning on cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and coriander, not the American pumpkin-pie mix; a pinch of it is genuinely a pinch.
- CurrantsDried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. Moisten them with a spoonful of rum and let them sit while you make the paste so they plump rather than scorch.
- A hot ovenRead that as 425-450F (220-230C). The pastry needs the initial blast to lift the layers; a slack oven gives a greasy, flat cake.
- Sealing the sandwichThis is the hinge. Press the edges of each pair firmly together, damp them if need be, or the fruit and syrup will leak out and burn onto the tray. A vent slash or two in the top helps as well.
- The glazeSugar and water brushed on before baking dries to a thin, faintly crackly finish. Some cooks brush with egg white and dust with sugar for a heavier crust; that is a variation, not the original.
- Yield and timingThe recipe gives a cost of a shilling a dozen, which is a unit price rather than a stated yield. At that size and heat they need roughly 15-20 minutes; take them out when the pastry is well risen and evenly browned.
Sly cakes belong to a wide English family of enclosed fruit pastries -- Eccles, Banbury, Chorley, Hawkshead -- in which a small amount of dried fruit is hidden between two thin layers of paste. The name is usually explained as a joke about the fruit being concealed, the cake giving no outward sign of what is inside; that reading is traditional rather than documented. Cassell's gives it here as a plain, cheap thing: three-quarters of a pound of flour, a spoonful of currants and a splash of rum, costed at a shilling the dozen, which was the sort of arithmetic a Victorian household book was expected to supply. The rough-puff technique -- rolling fat into the paste in three stages instead of building a full laminated dough with a butter block -- was a common domestic shortcut for this kind of everyday baking, and it survives essentially unchanged.