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Little Fig Cakes
Beat together five eggs. Add to this a pinch of salt, a cup each of sugar and chopped nuts, and a half cup of raisins, the juice of one lemon and a pinch of nutmeg, one cup of bread-crumbs in which has been well mixed a rounded teaspoon of baking-powder, and one-half pound figs chopped fine. Bake in one rather thin sheet and when the cake is cold cut in small squares. This may be iced with a plain boiled icing (see Introductory Recipes) into which has been stirred one cup of chopped figs and nuts.
A flourless sheet cake bound with breadcrumbs, closer to a dense fruit-and-nut bar than a sponge. The original gives no pan, no oven setting and no time, so those are the gaps to fill.
- Oven and timingBake at 350F. In a half-sheet or a 9x13 pan the batter runs thin and is done in 20-30 minutes, when the centre springs back and the edges pull from the sides. It goes from moist to leathery quickly, so check early.
- "One rather thin sheet"Aim for a layer about half an inch deep. A 9x13 pan gives a slightly thicker cake and roughly 24 squares; a rimmed half-sheet spreads it thin and yields closer to 40 small pieces.
- The eggs are the leaveningThe eggs do much of the lifting -- the recipe says only "beat together five eggs", but beating them well before the other ingredients go in helps, since there is no flour and no creamed butter. The rounded teaspoon of baking powder mixed through the crumbs is also a genuine leavener, not just insurance.
- Bread-crumbsDry, fine crumbs rather than the soft fresh kind, and not seasoned commercial crumbs. The recipe does not specify, but stale white bread dried out and rolled or processed fine suits the method; soft crumbs carry more moisture and the cake may sink.
- FigsDried figs, stems removed. Chop with an oiled knife or scissors and toss the pieces through a spoonful of the crumbs so they do not clump on the bottom of the pan. If they are hard, a ten-minute soak in hot water, then drained and patted dry, makes chopping possible.
- Boiled icingThat is a hot-syrup meringue: sugar syrup taken to the soft-ball stage, around 238-240F, poured in a thread into stiffly beaten egg whites. It sets fast, so cut the squares after it firms, wiping the knife between cuts. The added figs and nuts make it stiffer still, and the cake is perfectly good plain.
- CuttingCool completely in the pan. Warm, this cake tears rather than cuts, and the fig pieces drag.
- KeepingUniced, the squares improve on the second day and keep about a week in a tin. Iced, eat within two or three days before the meringue weeps.
Breadcrumb cakes like this one belong to a long European tradition of baking without flour, seen in the nut tortes of central Europe, where ground nuts or dried crumbs carry the structure and beaten eggs do the lifting. The dish reached American books partly through that route and partly through thrift: stale bread was a resource, not waste. The instruction to bake in a sheet and cut in small squares also marks the period's fashion for tea-table fancies, small sweets served in quantity rather than a single cake brought whole to the table.