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Arcadia Cakes
Scald and dry a small mixing bowl, put in 3 tablespoons butter and rub until creamy. Add slowly 1/3 1/3 cup sugar; when smooth and light add 1 egg yolk and 3 tablespoons milk. Sift in 5/8 cup pastry flour and 3/4 teaspoon baking powder. Mix well, then add 1 egg white beaten stiff. Bake in greased and floured muffin tins not more than 2 inches in diameter. The finished cakes should be not more than three-fourths of an inch thick. Remove soft centers from cakes, taking them out from the top; fill cakes with Cocoa Butter Cream, put cakes together in pairs with the filling inside, cover with White Butter Cream and cover entire cake with thin Coffee Frosting. Decorate with reserved cream forced through a very small pastry tube of paper or tin. The butter cream may be omitted and cakes be merely frosted on top if preferred.
A petit-four batter: one egg's worth of cake, baked thin in tiny tins, then hollowed, filled, stacked and glazed. The assembly matters more than the baking.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. Cakes this small and thin want a moderate oven, 350-375F, for roughly 10-12 minutes -- they are done as soon as the tops spring back.
- Scalding the bowlRinsing the bowl with boiling water and drying it warms the metal or china so the butter creams smoothly without melting. The recipe does not say why it is wanted.
- 5/8 cup flourThat is 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons, about 70 g of pastry flour. If you have no pastry flour, use the same volume of all-purpose with 1 1/2 teaspoons of it replaced by cornstarch.
- Tin sizeTwo-inch tins means the small ends of a mini-muffin pan or individual tartlet tins. Fill them barely half full: the finished cake must be under 3/4 inch thick, since two of them plus filling become one petit four.
- Folding the whiteThe stiff white goes in last and is best folded rather than beaten into a batter already raised by baking powder. Overworking it risks a dense crumb.
- Hollowing and fillingCool the cakes completely first, then cut a small cone from the top with a paring knife. Warm cake tears. The recipe does not say what becomes of the removed centers; they are not put back, since the cavity takes the cocoa butter cream.
- YieldOne egg and 3 tablespoons of butter give roughly 10 to 12 small cakes, so five or six finished pairs. For a luncheon plate, double or triple the batter rather than trying to stretch it.
- Frosting consistencyThe coffee frosting is called thin, presumably so it flows over the butter cream in a single coat without dragging. Thin it with strong cold coffee a few drops at a time; a stiff glaze risks pulling the assembled pair apart.
- Butter cream and raw eggDepending on which butter cream in the book you use, it may contain uncooked egg. If so, use pasteurized egg, and keep the finished cakes refrigerated until shortly before serving.
The technique here is the French petit four glac e reduced to a domestic scale: a plain butter sponge, split or hollowed, filled, and sealed under a poured glaze so it can be eaten in two bites without a fork. Names like Arcadia were applied freely to such confections, the pastoral associations of the Greek region suggesting idyllic simplicity rather than any particular place or origin. The closing concession -- that the butter cream may be omitted and the cakes simply frosted on top -- lets the reader weigh ambition against the time available in a kitchen without staff.