Chocolate Cakes
INGREDIENTS. -1 lb. of white sugar pounded and sifted, 1 oz. of chocolate, water. AVERAGE COST, 4td.
Scrape the chocolate to a powder and mix it with the sugar. Make into a paste with cold water, then boil up gently and drop with a silver or bone spoon on thick white paper slightly greased. Coffee drops or cakes can be made in the same manner.
These are sugar drops, not cakes in any modern sense: a stiff sugar paste boiled briefly and spooned out to set into hard little lozenges. The whole thing hinges on how far you take the sugar and how quickly you work.
- "Cakes" means dropsIn Victorian confectionery a cake is any small flat disc. The recipe itself uses "drops" and "cakes" interchangeably; nothing is baked.
- The chocolate is not a bar as sold nowThe chocolate meant here is a hard, unsweetened block of ground cacao, sold for grating into drinking chocolate. Unsweetened baking chocolate is the closest match; 1 oz of cocoa powder will also work, though the drops will be drier. Modern eating chocolate carries its own sugar and cocoa butter and will not behave the same way.
- Proportions1 lb of sugar to 1 oz of chocolate is 16 to 1 — these are sugar sweets with a chocolate flavour, closer to fondant than to anything fudgy. Do not expect a deep chocolate taste, and do not increase the chocolate much or the paste will refuse to set firm.
- The unmeasured waterNo quantity is given because you are working to a texture: enough cold water to bring the sugar and chocolate to a thick, spoonable paste, in practice somewhere near 4 to 5 tablespoons for the pound. Err dry; excess water only means longer boiling.
- How far to boil"Boil up gently" gives no stage or temperature; the recipe assumes you know when to stop. Take it no further than a thick syrup that will set opaque, or the drops turn to glassy toffee instead of the crumbly lozenge intended. It stiffens in the pan fast, so drop promptly.
- Silver or bone spoonBone and silver were specified because they do not taint the sugar. A stainless or silicone spoon does the job now.
- The paperGreased paper was the period's non-stick surface. Baking parchment or a silicone mat needs no greasing and releases the set drops cleanly.
- Coffee dropsFor the variation, replace the chocolate with a tablespoon or so of very strong coffee or coffee essence, counting it as part of the liquid rather than adding it on top.
- Yield and keepingA pound of sugar makes a large batch of small drops. Dry them uncovered for a few hours, then keep airtight; they soften in a humid kitchen.
Sugar drops of this kind sat at the cheap end of Victorian confectionery — the cost given for a pound of sweets, most likely 4½d, is the point of the entry as much as the method is. Chocolate at the time was still primarily a drink: it reached the household as a hard, bitter block to be scraped or grated, and using it as a flavouring for sugar work was a secondary application. Beeton's confectionery chapters are full of these one-line "drops", all built on the same base of boiled sugar dropped onto paper, a domestic imitation of the lozenges that professional confectioners turned out on a much larger scale. The interchangeable ending, that coffee cakes are made "in the same manner", is characteristic of the book's economy: one technique, learned once, was expected to carry a dozen sweets.