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Fancy Cakes (Petits Fours)
INGREDIENTS. Any sweet paste or slices of sponge or pound cake, icing of plain sugar, or of any fancy kind, such as rose or chocolate; small crystalised fruits, strips of angelica or candied-peel, blanched almonds, pistachio nuts, or any garnish that taste may direct.
FARMERS' FRUIT CAKE.
These pretty little cakes, which cost so much to buy from a pastrycook, can easily be made at home. The simplest mode of doing so is to stamp out small rounds, stars, PETITS FOURS. &c., from slices of stale sponge or pound cake with a fancy cutter; to cover them with icing, and, before it is quite set, to garnish them, according to taste, with the ingredients named above.
The page has come through the scanner with two neighbouring entries tangled into it, so read past the stray words: the working method is simply to stamp shapes from firm cake, ice them, and garnish before the icing sets. No quantities are given because none are needed — this is a technique rather than a formula.
- Ignore the intrusions"Plain butter may be done in the IN-GREDIENTS", the heading "FARMERS' FRUIT CAKE" and the closing "Fill your baskets high" belong to adjacent entries on the original page. The recipe proper runs from the ingredient list to the end of the second paragraph.
- Stale cake is the instruction that mattersFresh sponge tears under a cutter and soaks up icing. A day-old, close-grained pound cake or a sponge left uncovered overnight cuts cleanly and holds a sharp edge.
- Pound cake and spongeVictorian pound cake is the equal-weights butter cake, dense enough to handle. "Sponge" here is likely to mean a firm whisked sponge of the kind then usual, rather than the airy modern chiffon, which is too fragile to stamp.
- "Icing of plain sugar"This is water icing — sifted icing sugar with just enough water or lemon juice to coat the back of a spoon thickly. It should flow slowly, not run off; too thin and it soaks in and the garnish slides.
- Rose and chocolate icingRose means water icing coloured pink and flavoured with rosewater, which is stronger now than most palates expect: a few drops per cupful. Chocolate icing of the period would generally have been made with cocoa or grated plain chocolate beaten into the sugar.
- Crystallised fruit and angelica"Crystalised fruits" are candied cherries, violets, apricots and the like. Angelica is candied angelica stem, still sold for cake decoration but often stiff and dry; a brief soak in warm water makes it cut into clean strips.
- Timing the garnishWater icing skins over within a few minutes. Work in small batches — ice six, garnish six — rather than icing the whole tray and then reaching for the almonds.
- Cut and yieldThe book gives no sizes. As a working guide, slices about half an inch thick and cutters around an inch and a half across will give roughly two dozen petits fours from a small loaf-sized cake. Trimmings are the cook's, or go into a trifle.
- KeepingBest the day they are made. In a tin the icing stays sound overnight, but the cut faces dry quickly, so cover them or press a little apricot glaze on the sides before icing.
Petits fours means "small ovens" — the name is generally traced to the practice of baking these delicate morsels in the falling heat of a brick oven after the bread and larger cakes were drawn out, when the temperature was gentle enough not to scorch them. In Beeton's day they were largely the pastrycook's province, sold in confectioners' shops at prices that made them a treat rather than a staple, and the entry's opening claim — that cakes "which cost so much to buy from a pastrycook" can easily be made at home — is the book's whole argument in miniature. The method given is the honest shortcut: not baking to shape, but cutting shapes from an existing cake, which is how a household without a pastrycook's equipment could still produce something that looked shop-bought. The garnishes named — crystallised fruit, angelica, pistachios, candied peel — were grocer's goods, several of them imported, kept in the store cupboard and brought out to make plain cake look expensive.