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TIPSY CAKE (simple, for Children)
Take a dozen small stale spongecakes, spread a little jam on each, and arrange them in a pile in the centre of a deep glass dish. Pour over them as much raisin wine as they will absorb, and keep putting it over them till they are soaked. Pour round them a pint of nicely-flavoured cold custard, and ornament the dish with dried fruits cut in slices. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for a dish.
A nursery trifle, built from stale sponge rather than fresh, and soaked in raisin wine instead of the sherry an adult version would take. Only the soaking and the custard need any thought.
- Raisin wineA country wine fermented from dried raisins and sugar, often made at home and generally weaker than sherry, though strengths varied. It is still alcoholic: the "simple, for children" of the title appears to mean the omission of brandy and sherry rather than a teetotal dish. For a genuinely alcohol-free version, soak the cakes in orange juice thinned with a little sugar syrup, or in strong cold tea sweetened to taste.
- Stale cakes are the pointFresh sponge collapses into paste the moment liquid hits it. Cakes a day or two old, dry to the touch, absorb steadily and hold their shape in the pile. If yours are fresh, leave them uncovered overnight.
- Soak in stagesThe instruction to "keep putting it over them till they are soaked" is the hinge. Add a few spoonfuls, wait a minute for it to draw in, add more. Flooding the dish at once leaves the outsides sodden and the centres dry, and the pile slides apart.
- A pint of custardAn Imperial pint is 20 fl oz, about 570 ml. This means a pouring egg custard — crème anglaise — cooked over gentle heat until it coats the back of a spoon, then cooled completely. Anything thick enough to stand up will not pour round the cakes as described.
- "Dried fruits cut in slices"Likely candidates from a Victorian larder include candied peel, glacé cherries, angelica and preserved ginger, sliced thin and laid over the mound, along with sliceable dried fruits such as figs or dates.
- The dishA deep glass dish shows the pile of cake standing in the centre with the custard poured round it and the fruit over the top. Assemble no more than a few hours ahead and keep it cold; the pile softens as it stands.
- Yield and cost"Sufficient for a dish" means one bowlful; the recipe gives no number of servings. The 3s. is the book's own 'probable cost' figure and is not a negligible sum for the period.
Tipsy cake is a near relation of the trifle: sponge or a whole stale cake steeped in fortified wine until it will take no more, then drowned in custard. The name is usually read as meaning that the cake, not the eater, is tipsy, though the joke in the American form, "tipsy parson," leaves the point deliberately open. The grander eighteenth- and nineteenth-century versions used a single round cake soaked in sherry or Madeira and stuck all over with split blanched almonds, which is traditionally said to have given it the alternative name of hedgehog pudding. Cassell's offers this stripped-down version, made with raisin wine, which was produced at home from dried fruit when grapes were out of reach.