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Excellent Wedding Cake
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: 1 1/2 pounds of flour, 1 1/2 pounds of butter, 1/2 pound of candied lemon, 1/2 pound of candied orange, 1/2 pound of candied citron, 1 pound of dried cherries, 1 1/2 pounds of dried currants (if the cherries cannot easily be procured, they may be omitted, and 2 1/2 pounds of currants used instead), 8 ounces of almonds, 8 eggs, the rind of 4 oranges or of 2 lemons rubbed upon sugar, half an ounce of spices, consisting of powdered cinnamon, grated nutmeg, and powdered cloves in equal proportions, a teaspoonful 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 flavored 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 mould with double folds of buttered paper, pour in the mixture, put it in a moderately heated over. Put paper under the mould above the cake, to keep it from burning, 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, 1 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 2 pounds of icing sugar into a bowl and work into it the whites of 2, or, if necessary, 3, or even 4 eggs. 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 around 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 added. Time to bake the cake, about six hours.
A classic English rich fruit cake, built to be made months ahead. Two things in the original need attention before you begin: the sugar quantity is never stated, and the six-hour bake belongs at a lower temperature than "moderate" usually means today.
- The missing sugarSugar appears in the method (rubbed with citrus rind, then "add very gradually the sugar") but no weight is given in the ingredient list. For a cake balanced on 1 1/2 lb each of flour and butter, contemporary recipes of this type call for 1 1/2 lb of sugar; treat that as a reconstruction, not the author's figure.
- Oven temperature"Moderately heated" in these books is not a fixed figure, and a six-hour bake implies something well below what we would now call a moderate oven. A cake of this density wants 275-300F, with the tin double-lined and a sheet of paper laid over the top, as the text directs. Test with a skewer at the centre.
- A small tumblerful of brandyTumblers of the period varied, a half-pint (about 8 fl oz) being common, so a "small" one is perhaps around 1/2 cup; the measure is not exact. Alcohol also does preservative work, so the substitution offered (one extra egg) will likely give a cake that keeps less well.
- Beating by handThree-quarters of an hour of beating was necessary with a wooden spoon and no chemical leavening; all the lift comes from air worked into the butter and eggs. A stand mixer reaches the same point in 10 to 15 minutes of creaming and gradual addition. Fold the fruit in by hand at the end.
- Candied peel and dried cherriesBuy whole candied lemon, orange and citron peel and shred it yourself if you can; pre-diced mixed peel is drier and more bitter. "Dried cherries" here most likely means glace or candied cherries rather than the modern sour dried sort, though either works if rinsed of syrup and dried.
- The tinThe finished batter runs to roughly 10 to 11 lb, counting the reconstructed sugar. Use a deep 9- or 10-inch round tin, lined with two thicknesses of buttered parchment up the sides and standing an inch above the rim. Fill no more than three-quarters full.
- Icing sugarThe insistence on obtaining icing sugar matters: this is sugar ground very fine (modern confectioners' sugar also carries a little starch as an anti-caking agent). Granulated will not make a smooth royal icing. "Liquid blue" is a trace of blue colouring used to cancel the yellow cast of the sugar; a pinpoint of blue food colouring does the same and is easy to overdo.
- Raw egg white in the icingBoth the almond paste and the royal icing are bound with uncooked white, and the brief drying in a gentle oven does not pasteurise them. Pasteurised egg whites or meringue powder give the same stiff, shiny paste without the risk.
- KeepingThe advice to leave it months is sound. Wrap the cooled cake in parchment and then foil, and feed it with a spoonful of brandy every few weeks. Ice it only a few days before it is wanted, as the text says.