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Lemon Queens
1/4 lb. butter 1/2 lb. sugar Grated rind 1 lemon 3/4 tablespoon lemon juice Yolks 4 eggs 5 ozs. flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon soda (scant) Whites 4 eggs Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and continue beating. Then add grated rind, lemon juice, and yolks of eggs beaten until thick and lemon-colored. Mix and sift soda, salt, and flour; add to first mixture and beat thoroughly. Add whites of eggs beaten stiff. Bake from twenty to twenty-five minutes in small tins.
A rich lemon queen cake in the English style, given by weight as was normal in the period. The batter is stiff and depends entirely on beaten egg white for lift.
- Weights in cups1/4 lb butter is 1/2 cup (1 stick); 1/2 lb sugar is a generous cup; 5 oz flour is about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of all-purpose, spooned and levelled. Weighing gives the better result here, since the flour quantity is deliberately small.
- No oven temperature is givenFor small cakes of this richness a moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable modern choice. Much hotter and the sugar-heavy edges may colour before the centres set.
- "Small tins"Standard or mini muffin tins, well buttered, or paper cases. Fill two-thirds full. Twenty to twenty-five minutes suits standard cups; mini cups will be done in 12 to 15.
- Soda, scantA quarter teaspoon of baking soda against three-quarters tablespoon of lemon juice is about the limit of what that acid can neutralise. Measure it short, as the recipe says, or the crumb may pick up a soapy note.
- The hinge is the egg whitesBeat them to firm but not dry peaks and fold them in with a spatula in two or three additions. Beating them in, as one would the yolk mixture, knocks the air out of the principal leavening and gives a denser cake.
- Lemon rindGrate only the yellow zest, and rub it into the sugar before creaming if you want a stronger perfume; the sugar crystals break the oil cells open.
- YieldRoughly 15 to 18 standard cupcakes, or about two dozen small ones. They keep a couple of days in a tin.