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Twelfth Cake
Put two pounds of fresh butter into a large bowl, and beat it to a smooth cream: then add two pounds of powdered sugar, a large nutmeg, grated, and a quarter of an ounce each of powdered cinnamon, powdered mace, powdered ginger, and powdered allspice. Beat the mixture for ten minutes, add gradually twenty eggs, and beat the cake for twenty minutes. Work in two pounds of flour, four pounds of currants, half a pound of bruised almonds, half a pound each of candied orange, candied lemon, and candied citron, and, last of all, a claret-glassful of brandy, and beat the cake lightly between every addition. Line a baking-hoop with doubled paper well buttered, pour in the mixture, and be careful that it does no more than three-parts fill it, that there may be room for the cake to rise. Cover the top with paper, set the tin on an inverted plate in the oven to keep it from burning at the bottom, and bake in a slow but well-heated oven. When it is nearly cold, cover it as smoothly as possible with sugar-icing three-quarters of an inch thick (see FROST, OR ICING, FOR CAKES). Decorate with fancy articles of any kind, with a high ornament in the center: these may frequently be hired of the confectioner. In order to ascertain whether the cake is done enough, plunge a bright knife into the centre of it, and if it comes out bright and clear the cake is done. A cake of this description will, if properly made, and stored in a cool, dry place, keep for twelve months. If cut too soon it will crumble and fall to pieces. It will be at its best when it has been kept four months. Time to bake, four hours and a half. Probable cost, 12s. for this quantity.
This is a full confectioner's-scale fruit cake — roughly fourteen pounds of batter before icing — built on the old creaming method with no chemical leavening whatever. The lift comes entirely from air beaten into butter and eggs, which is why the beating times are stated so precisely.
- The hinge: beating is the only leaveningThere is no baking powder or soda here, so the ten minutes after the sugar and the twenty minutes after the eggs are structural, not decorative. A stand mixer on medium does the work; add the eggs one or two at a time so the batter never breaks.
- Halve or quarter itAs written this makes a very large cake — a hoop of twelve inches or more, since the recipe insists it be filled only three-parts full — and feeds a large party. Quartering gives a manageable 8-inch cake: 8 oz butter, 8 oz sugar, 5 eggs, 8 oz flour, 1 lb currants, 2 oz each almonds and candied peel.
- "A slow but well-heated oven"Somewhere in the region of 275–300F, and no hotter — a rich fruit cake at higher heat sets a crust before the middle cooks. The instruction appears to mean an oven fully brought up and holding steady, not one merely lit.
- Baking-hoop and paperA baking-hoop is a bottomless metal ring set on a paper-lined tray; a deep springform or a straight-sided cake tin does the same job. Line with a doubled band of parchment standing two inches proud, cover the top loosely once it colours, and the inverted plate under the tin is doing what a doubled baking sheet does now.
- Eggs and the claret glassEggs of the period generally ran smaller than today's, so twenty of them may be nearer eighteen modern large eggs. A claret glass is a small wine glass; reckon the brandy at roughly 2–4 fl oz for the full quantity.
- Currants, and the fruit ratioCurrants here are dried Zante currants, not fresh redcurrants. Four pounds of them to two pounds of flour makes a very dense cake — toss the fruit in a spoonful of the weighed flour so it does not sink.
- Bruised almondsBlanched almonds crushed coarsely under a rolling pin, not ground almond meal, which would change the crumb.
- Timing and the knife testFour and a half hours suits the full-size cake; a quartered one needs about two and a half. The bright-knife test is a clean-skewer test, though a rich fruit cake will always leave some sticky fruit on the blade — look for absence of wet batter.
- The icingThree-quarters of an inch of sugar icing means royal icing, which sets hard enough to carry ornaments. Apply only when the cake is completely cold, over marzipan if you want the surface smooth.
- KeepingThe advice to wait four months is the recipe's own. Wrap in parchment and foil, feed with a spoonful of brandy from time to time, and store cool and dry; cut it too soon, as the recipe warns, and it will crumble.
Twelfth Cake was the centrepiece of Twelfth Night, 6 January, the close of the Christmas season and long the more riotous of the two feasts. The cake was traditionally baked with a bean and a pea hidden inside, the finders becoming king and queen of the evening's misrule — a custom generally traced back through medieval Europe to much older midwinter revels. By the time Cassell's was compiled, London confectioners' windows were famous for their Twelfth Cakes, towering under royal icing and elaborate ornaments; the note that decorations "may frequently be hired of the confectioner" suggests these were often loaned rather than bought outright. Twelfth Night observance faded through the nineteenth century as Christmas Day itself grew in importance, and the cake did not vanish so much as migrate: the heavily fruited, brandy-fed, royal-iced cake we now call Christmas cake is close kin to this one, moved back twelve days in the calendar.