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Rolled Wafers
1/4 cup butter 1/4 cup milk 1/2 cup powdered sugar 7/8 cup bread flour 1/2 teaspoon vanilla Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and milk drop by drop; then add flour and flavoring. Spread very thinly with a broad, long-bladed knife on a buttered inverted dripping-pan. Crease in three-inch squares, and bake in a slow oven until delicately browned. Place pan on back of range, cut squares apart with a sharp knife, and roll while warm in tubular or cornucopia shape. If squares become too brittle to roll, place in oven to soften. If rolled tubular shape, tie in bunches with narrow ribbon. These are very attractive, and may be served with sherbet, ice cream, or chocolate. If rolled cornucopia shape, they may be filled with whipped cream just before sending to table. Colored wafers may be made from this mixture by adding leaf green or fruit red. If colored green, flavor with one-fourth teaspoon almond and three-fourths teaspoon vanilla. If colored pink, flavor with rose. Colored wafers must be baked in a very slow oven and turned frequently, otherwise they will not be of the uniform color that is desired.
English Rolled Wafers I (Brandy Wafers) 1/2 cup molasses 1 cup flour (scant) 1/2 cup butter 2/3 cup sugar 1 tablespoon ginger Heat molasses to boiling-point, add butter, then slowly, stirring constantly, flour mixed and sifted with ginger and sugar. Drop small portions from tip of spoon on a buttered inverted dripping-pan two inches apart. Bake in a slow oven, cool slightly, remove from pan, and roll over handle of wooden spoon.
Two related batters, both baked as thin sheets or drops on the underside of a pan and rolled while still hot. Everything depends on speed once they leave the oven.
- The hinge: roll while hotA wafer stays pliable only briefly off the heat, so work fast and keep the pan somewhere warm (the recipe says the back of the range) while you cut and roll; the direction to return brittle squares to the oven to soften is in the text and you will use it.
- Slow oven"Slow" is generally taken as somewhere around 300F, and the "very slow oven" specified for the coloured wafers lower again, perhaps 250-275F. The point is to set the batter without letting it brown, since browning muddies the green or pink.
- Inverted dripping-panA dripping-pan was the shallow rectangular roasting pan. Its flat underside gave an unrimmed surface to spread on and a free edge to lift from. Use the back of a heavy rimmed baking sheet, buttered, or bake on parchment on a flat sheet.
- 7/8 cup flourFourteen tablespoons, about 4 oz of bread flour.
- Powdered sugarA finely ground sugar, in this period generally coarser than today's cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar. Modern confectioners' sugar works directly.
- Leaf green and fruit redPrepared colourings sold for household use at the time. Any modern food colouring substitutes.
- TimingNo time is given for either batter. Thin spread squares take roughly 8 to 12 minutes at 300F; the brandy wafers, dropped and spread by their own molasses, take about the same and are done when the bubbling stops and the edges darken.
- Brandy wafersThere is no brandy in this version, whatever the name suggests; the name is attached in English cookery to thin molasses-and-ginger wafers of this type. They crisp as they cool, so slide them off the pan the moment they will hold together and roll over a wooden spoon handle.
- Yield and servingNo yield is given for either mixture. Both go stale-soft within hours in humid air; store airtight, with the whipped cream added only just before serving, as directed.