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Wafers, Geneva
Beat three ounces of fresh butter to cream. Add two heaped table-spoonfuls of powdered sugar, two well-whisked eggs, and, very gradually, three ounces of dried flour. Beat the batter till it is smooth. Butter a baking-sheet, and drop on it at regular intervals a tea-spoonful of the mixture. Bake the wafers in a gentle oven. When they are set, but still quite soft, take them out, and turn them to the shape of horns. Put a little piece of bread into the wide end to keep them in shape, and let them remain in the oven till crisp. When they are cold, take out the bread, and just before serving the wafers fill them with jam and whipped cream. Sufficient for a moderate-sized dish. Probable cost, 1s. Time, altogether, about twenty minutes.
A thin drop-batter wafer, rolled hot into cones and filled at the last moment. Everything depends on working fast while the wafers are still pliable.
- The hinge: shape them hotThe wafers stay bendable only briefly once off the sheet, so bake a few at a time and roll each one the moment it will lift cleanly; a wafer that has cooled will crack rather than curl.
- "A gentle oven"A low to lower-moderate heat, in the region of 300 to 325F. Hot enough to set the wafers and lightly colour the edges, not to brown the centres, which would make them brittle before you can shape them.
- Weights in cupsThree ounces butter is 6 tablespoons; three ounces flour is about 2/3 cup. The "two heaped table-spoonfuls of powdered sugar" is roughly 2 ounces, or a scant 1/3 cup.
- Powdered sugarIn a British book of this date this means finely ground white sugar, closest to modern caster or superfine sugar. Confectioners' sugar, which contains cornstarch, can be substituted, though the result may differ somewhat.
- "Dried flour"Victorian kitchens warmed and sifted flour to drive off damp before using it in delicate batters. Modern bagged flour needs nothing but sifting.
- Spread the teaspoonfulsCoax each spoonful out thin with the back of the spoon, and leave wide gaps between them, as they spread as the butter melts.
- Instead of the bread plugThe piece of bread holds the cone open during the second, crisping bake. A metal cream-horn or cannoli form does the same job and comes out cleanly. Parchment on the baking sheet also removes the main difficulty the recipe glosses over, which is lifting the wafers without tearing them.
- Yield and servingThe yield depends on how thinly the spoonfuls are spread; the recipe says only that it is sufficient for a moderate-sized dish. Fill only immediately before serving, as the jam and cream soften them within minutes.
These belong to the family of small sweet wafers served at the end of a Victorian dinner. The link between the name and Geneva is traditional rather than documented. What is notable here is that no iron is involved: this is an oven-baked drop batter, the same family as the French tuile and cigarette russe. The listed cost of one shilling is a reminder of what such a dish signified in a middle-class household: butter, eggs, sugar and whipped cream all spent on something with no nourishment in it at all, produced in twenty minutes and eaten in seconds.