Home › T › Tipsy Cake, or Sponge Cake Pudding
Tipsy Cake, or Sponge Cake Pudding
INGREDIENTS for large dish.- 12 stale small sponge-cakes, raisin wine, 1/21 lb. of jam, 1 pint of custard (see CUSTARD).
AVERAGE COST, 2s.
Soak the sponge cakes, which should be stale (on this account they should be cheaper), in a little raisin wine; arrange them on a deep glass dish in four layers, putting some jam between the layers, and pour round them a pint of custard, made by recipe, decorating the top with cut preserved fruit. TIME.-2 hours to soak the cakes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Toad-in-the-Hole. (Cold Meat Cookery). INGREDIENTS for good-sized dish.-6 oz. of flour, 1 pint of milk, 3 eggs. butter, a few slices of cold mutton, pepper and salt to taste, 2 kidneys. AVERAGE Cost, exclusive of the cold meat, 1s.
Make a smooth batter of flour, milk, and eggs in the above proportion; butter a baking-dish, and pour in the batter. Into this place a few slices of cold mutton, previously well seasoned, and the kidneys, which should be cut into rather small pieces; bake about 1 hour, or rather longer, and send it to table in the dish it was baked in. Oysters or mushrooms may be substituted for the kidneys, and will be found exceedingly good.
TIME. Rather more than 1 hour.
SEASONABLE at any time. rather Toad-in-the-Hole. (A Homely but Savoury Dish.) - INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-1½ lb. of rump steak, 1 sheep's kidney, pepper and salt to taste. For the batter, 3 eggs, 1 pint of milk, 4 tablespoonfuls of flour, 1/21 saltspoonful of salt. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 6d.
Cut up the steak and kidney into convenient-sized pieces, and put them into a pie dish, with a good seasoning of salt and pepper; mix the flour with a small quantity of milk at first, to prevent its being lumpy; add the remainder, and the 3 eggs, which should be well beaten; put in the salt, stir the batter for about 5 minutes, and pour it over the steak. Place it in a tolerably TOAST, TO MAKE DRY.
TOFFEE, EVERTON. brisk oven immediately, and bake for 1½ should be piled lightly on the dish they are hour.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Note. The remains of cold beef, rather underdone, may be substituted for the steak, and, when liked, the smallest possible quantity of minced onion or shalot may be added.
An assembled cold pudding with no cooking beyond the custard, so its success rests entirely on the cakes being dry enough to drink the wine without collapsing.
- Stale is the pointFresh sponge turns to paste the moment wine touches it. Leave small sponge cakes or trimmed sponge fingers uncovered overnight, or dry them in a 300F oven for 10-15 minutes and cool them before soaking.
- Raisin wineA homemade sweet country wine once made from dried raisins, now effectively unobtainable. Sweet sherry, Madeira, Marsala or a Muscat gives the same sweet fortified character; allow roughly 150-200ml for twelve small cakes, added a little at a time.
- The jam quantityThe figure printed for the jam is garbled and cannot be read as written. Half a pound, about 225g, is the sensible reading for four layers.
- A pint of custardAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, about 570ml or 2.5 US cups. Make a stirred egg custard and cool it before pouring, or the sponge will disintegrate; a pouring consistency, not a set one, is wanted.
- Soaking timeTwo hours is for cakes that are genuinely dry and hard. Check after 30 minutes: they should be damp through but still hold their shape when lifted.
- The dishA deep glass dish is specified, presumably so the layers show from the side. Build in four distinct tiers with jam between, then pour the custard round rather than over, as the recipe directs, so the top stays clean for the fruit.
- Decoration"Cut preserved fruit" means candied cherries, angelica, crystallised pineapple or similar. Almonds are the other usual garnish for tipsy cake.
- YieldTwelve sponge cakes and a pint of custard serve six to eight. The recipe allows 2 hours' soaking; it will keep its shape better if left longer in a cold place.
Tipsy cake takes its name plainly enough from the wine the sponge is steeped in, and it belongs to the same English family as trifle; the Scottish "tipsy laird" is a related dish in which whisky replaces the wine. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century versions often used a whole round sponge, soaked until swollen, stood in a pool of custard and stuck all over with split almonds, a form sometimes likened to a hedgehog. Beeton's use of small stale sponge cakes, and her remark that staleness makes them cheaper, is at least suggestive of the book's approach: it treats a showy dessert as a way of using up baking that has gone past its best, and prices the whole thing at two shillings so a housekeeper can weigh it against the alternatives.