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Spongecakes, Iced
Make some sponge batter in the usual way, and bake it in a moderate oven in a large flat cake an inch thick. When done enough take it out, let it get cold, and with a sharp knife cut it into fancy shapes of any size and form. Put these on a baking sheet, spread jam over them, and place on this a coating of icing a quarter of an inch thick. Put them in a screen or in a warm situation till the icing is firmly set, and use them for dessert, etc. The icing may be prepared as follows. Break the whites of two eggs into a bowl, stir into them sufficient fine sugar to make a stiffish paste, and beat the mixture briskly with a wooden spoon. Add every now and then one or two drops of lemon-juice. When ready, cover the icing with a wet cloth till wanted.
A Victorian way of getting a tray of iced fancies out of one sheet of sponge. Almost all the technique is in the icing, which is royal icing dried in a warm place rather than baked.
- OvenA moderate oven is usually taken as somewhere around 350F (175C). A sheet an inch thick in a half-sheet or 9x13 pan will likely take something like 20-25 minutes; test with a skewer rather than by the clock.
- "Sponge batter in the usual way"No method or quantities are given; the reader is expected to know them. A sponge of this period is generally a whisked one: eggs and sugar beaten to the ribbon and flour folded in. Roughly equal weights of egg, sugar and flour is the usual proportion, and about four eggs' worth will fill a 9x13 sheet.
- Cut the cake cold, and preferably staleA day-old sponge cuts far more cleanly into fancy shapes than a fresh one. Chill it, use a thin sharp knife or plain cutters, and wipe the blade between cuts.
- Raw egg white in the icingThis is royal icing, set by drying rather than cooking, so the whites are never heated. Anyone serving the young, elderly, pregnant or immune-compromised should use pasteurised egg white or meringue powder instead.
- Proportions for the icing"Sufficient fine sugar" works out at roughly 8-10 oz (about 2 to 2.5 cups) of sifted icing sugar per large egg white. "Fine sugar" here most likely means sugar pounded and sifted very fine, for which modern powdered sugar is the closest equivalent; granulated will stay gritty.
- The lemon juiceAdded a drop or two at a time, it slackens the paste and helps the icing whiten and set crisp. Add it slowly, since very little extra liquid will take a spreadable paste to a runny glaze.
- "A screen or a warm situation"A screen was a metal shield or hood used about the fire to hold heat on whatever stood in front of it; either way the point is steady dry warmth. An oven at its lowest setting with the door propped, or simply a warm dry room, will set a quarter-inch of icing in several hours to overnight.
- Keeping the icingThe wet cloth over the bowl is essential: royal icing skins over within minutes. Press plastic wrap directly onto the surface if you prefer.
- YieldA 9x13 sheet cut into 2-inch squares or rounds gives roughly two dozen fancies. Once dry they keep several days in a tin.
Cassell's places this among the small "dessert" confections that closed a Victorian dinner: not pudding, which came earlier, but the sweetmeats, fruit and biscuits eaten with wine after the cloth was drawn. The whisked sponge itself is much older, by a genealogy often repeated though not firmly established, traced to the Renaissance biscuit doughs raised by egg alone, and it earned its place in nineteenth-century households precisely because it could be baked flat, cut up and dressed several different ways. Royal icing, sugar beaten stiff with egg white and sharpened with lemon, was the standard finish of the period for anything meant to sit out and look handsome; it dries to a hard, matte, faintly brittle shell that holds its edge, which is why the same mixture covered wedding cakes. The instruction to spread jam under the icing may well be practical as much as decorative: it would seal the cut sponge so the icing does not sink in and go patchy, though the recipe does not say so.