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Wedding Cake, Excellent
A wedding cake is an expensive article to purchase, and if it is not wanted very large, may be made at home without much difficulty, and with a great saving of expense. It will improve with keeping-indeed, confectioners do not use their cakes until they have been made some months; and if a cake is cut into soon after it is made it will crumble. To make a wedding cake, first procure the following ingredients. One pound and a half of flour, one pound and a half of butter, half a pound of candied lemon, half a pound of candied orange, half a pound of candied citron, one pound of dried cherries, one pound and a half of dried currants (if the cherries cannot easily be procured, they may be omitted, and two pounds and a half of currants used instead), eight ounces of almonds, eight eggs, the rind of four oranges or of two lemons rubbed upon sugar, half an ounce of spices, consisting of powdered cinnamon, grated nutmeg, and powdered cloves in equal proportions, a tea-spoonful of salt, and a small tumblerful of brandy. If objected to, the brandy may be omitted, and another egg may be added. Wash, pick, and dry the currants, cut the cherries into moderate-sized pieces, slice the candied peel into thin shreds, blanch and pound the almonds, or cut them into very small pieces, and crush the flavoured sugar to powder. Put the butter into a large bowl, and beat it to cream, either with a wooden spoon or with the hand. Add very gradually the sugar, flour, and eggs, and when they are thoroughly mixed work in the rest of the ingredients. Put them in a little at a time, and beat the cake between every addition. It should be beaten fully three-quarters of an hour. Line a tin hoop with double folds of buttered paper, pour in the mixture, and place it on a metal baking-sheet with twelve folds of paper under it, and four or five on the top, to keep it from burning. Put it in a moderately-heated oven, and keep the oven at an even temperature until it is done enough. If the cake is to be iced, first prepare the almond part: Take half a pound of almonds, throw them into boiling water, and skin them. Pound them in a mortar with a few drops of orange-flower water, one pound of fine white sugar, and as much white of egg as will make a soft, stiff paste. Spread this over the top of the cake, and keep it from the edge as much as possible. Put it in a cool oven, or in a warm place, till it is dry and hard. To make the sugar icing, put two pounds of icing sugar into a bowl and work into it the whites of two eggs, or, if necessary, three, or even four. The whites must not be whisked, but thrown in as they are. Work the mixture to a stiff shiny paste, and whilst working it add occasionally a drop of lemon-juice. Be careful to obtain icing sugar. If a drop of liquid blue is added it will make it look whiter. The icing will need to be worked vigorously to make a paste which will not run, and the fewer eggs taken the better. The cake ought not to be iced until a short time before it is wanted, as it may get dirty. The icing should be spread evenly over with hands wetted with cold water, then smoothed with an ivory knife, and it should be put in a gentle oven to harden. It may be ornamented with little knobs of icing placed round the edge; and on the day of the wedding a wreath of white flowers and green leaves may be placed round it by way of ornament. If anything more elaborate is required, a pretty centre ornament may be made with glazed white cardboard, silver paper, and orange-blossom; or a stand and a drum, with artificial flowers, may be hired of the confectioner. Time to bake the cake, about six hours. Probable cost, 10s., or thereabouts. A cake of the same size, if bought at the confectioner's, would cost at least 30s. Sufficient for a cake the size of a large dinner-plate. This, when placed on a stand and ornamented, will have a very good appearance.
A classic British rich fruit cake with almond paste and royal icing, written for a cook who already knows the form. Two things need settling before you start: the sugar quantity is missing from the ingredient list, and "moderately-heated" for a six-hour bake means something much cooler than it sounds.
- The missing sugarThe list never states how much sugar to buy, though the method calls for orange or lemon rind rubbed onto sugar, then crushed and creamed with the butter. Cakes of this proportion normally take sugar equal to the butter and flour, so 1.5 lb (about 3 cups packed soft brown or caster sugar) is the sensible reading, but the original is genuinely silent on it.
- Oven temperatureA cake this size baked for six hours is unlikely to have gone into anything as hot as a 350F oven. The book gives no figure; 'moderately-heated' here, insulated by twelve folds of paper below and four or five above, probably corresponds to something in the region of 275-300F. The paper stack is doing the job a modern oven does with a low, even setting; a double band of parchment round the tin and a loose foil cap over the top achieves the same.
- Tin hoopA bottomless metal ring set on a baking sheet, lined with buttered paper. A deep round tin of about 9 to 10 inches, double-lined, is the nearest modern equivalent; 'the size of a large dinner-plate' points to roughly that.
- A small tumblerful of brandyPerhaps 4 to 6 fl oz, though the size of a 'small tumbler' is not fixed. The offered substitution of a single extra egg for the whole quantity suggests the brandy was counted as liquid as well as flavour, and that the measure was a modest one.
- Half an ounce of spicesRoughly 5 to 6 teaspoons in total, so about 2 teaspoons each of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Ground cloves at that strength are assertive.
- Dried cherriesMost likely candied or glace cherries rather than the modern dried sour cherry, though genuinely dried cherries were also sold at the period. If you use dried fruit the cake will be drier and less sweet.
- Three-quarters of an hour of beatingThere is no baking powder in this cake, so every bit of lift comes from air worked into the butter and eggs by hand. A stand mixer does the same work in 10 to 15 minutes on medium; beat the butter and sugar pale, then add the eggs slowly enough that the batter never splits.
- Raw egg white in the almond paste and icingBoth the marzipan and the royal icing are bound with uncooked whites and only dried in a warm oven, which does not reach a pasteurising temperature. Use pasteurised liquid egg white or meringue powder, particularly if the cake will be served to children, the elderly or anyone pregnant.
- Liquid blueThe whitening trick borrows laundry blue, a household product not intended for eating. A pinpoint of violet gel food colouring does the same optical job of cancelling the yellow cast.
- Testing and keepingAfter about five hours, test with a long skewer at the centre; it should come out clean with no wet crumb. The advice to keep the cake for months is sound: wrap it in parchment and foil, feed it with a spoonful of brandy every few weeks, and add the almond paste and icing only in the last week.
- YieldA 9-inch cake of this richness weighs around 8 lb and cuts into 40 to 60 of the thin fingers traditionally served, more if boxed for guests to take away.
The rich fruit cake armoured in almond paste and white royal icing is the standard British wedding cake of the nineteenth century, and Cassell's treats it as something a careful household could take on rather than order in the confectioner's window at three times the price. The almond layer beneath the icing is the older element, descended from the marchpane of Tudor banqueting tables; the hard white sugar shell above it became fashionable as refined sugar grew cheaper through the 1800s, and its whiteness is often said to have been read as a compliment to the bride. The instruction to keep the cake for months before cutting is not sentiment but chemistry: the fruit and spirit need time to redistribute, and a fresh one crumbles under the knife. The closing note that a stand and a drum with artificial flowers "may be hired of the confectioner" is a glimpse of how the tall tiered wedding cake could actually work in a household, where the elaborate architecture was rented scenery around a single home-baked cake.