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Strawberry Charlottes in Cases for Fifty
Having prepared 50 paper cases of about the capacity of very small tumblers, according to the directions in the preceding article; next bake 6 sheets of cake of any kind that is suitable to roll up, or of the following, which is right in quantity for 50 small charlottes. 3 rounded cupfuls of granulated sugar--1 1/2 pounds. 15 eggs. 1/2 cup of water. 4 rounded cupfuls of flour--18 ounces.
Separate the eggs. Beat the yolks, sugar and water rapidly for ten minutes. Have the flour weighed or measured ready. Whip the whites perfectly firm. Stir the flour into the beaten yolks, and the whipped whites last. Spread thinly on sheets of blank paper not greased, and bake in a quick oven about 6 minutes.
Careful baking is required, because if dried or burnt the cake will break. Brush the paper, under side, with water, and it can be pulled off the cake. Should any of the sheets become too dry to roll or bend in spite of care in baking, lay them on top of each other after wetting the paper, and let lie so half an hour.
Cut out the pieces of cake by the same paper pattern the shapes were cut by, but a trifle shorter, and put the lining of cake in the paper cases. No bottom of cake is needed, but little square pieces can be pushed down inside if wished.
A short time before serving fill the charlottes with the cream intended for the purpose.
This is a bakery-scale sheet sponge, baked on paper and cut to line paper cases for charlottes russes. The recipe assumes you have already made the paper cases and the strawberry cream from earlier articles in the book.
- Scale it downThe quantities are for 50 charlottes and six sheets of cake; the recipe does not say how large the sheets are. Dividing by five gives 3 eggs, about 4.8 oz sugar, 3.6 oz flour and a scant 2 tablespoons water, enough for roughly ten cases.
- Weigh, do not measureThe author gives both, and the weights are the reliable half: 1 1/2 lb granulated sugar and 18 oz flour. The recipe does not say what flour it means; a soft or cake flour may suit this thin, flexible sponge better than modern all-purpose.
- "A quick oven"Roughly 400-450F. Six minutes at that heat suits a thin sponge sheet; the cake should be set and barely coloured, still flexible. The recipe's own caution is that a dried or burnt sheet will break when rolled.
- No fat, no leaveningThis is a true foam sponge -- the 15 eggs do all the lifting. Beat the yolks, sugar and water until pale and thick (ten minutes by hand, three or four in a stand mixer), fold the flour in by hand, then the whites, and stop as soon as no streaks remain.
- Baking paperBlank paper meant plain uncoated stock, ungreased. Parchment does the same job and releases without wetting; if you use plain paper, the trick of brushing the underside with water and peeling still works.
- Reviving stiff sheetsStacking damp-papered sheets for half an hour is a humidity trick, and it works -- the moisture redistributes and the cake bends again. Wrapping cooled sheets in a damp towel or plastic achieves the same thing faster.
- Paper casesSouffle cups or straight-sided paper drink cups of about 5-6 oz stand in for cases "the capacity of very small tumblers." Cut the cake lining a little shorter than the case, as directed.
- Fill at the last minute"A short time before serving" is not optional. Whipped cream and macerated strawberries will soak the sponge lining within an hour or two, and the charlotte collapses into the case.
The charlotte russe is generally traced to Antonin Careme, who set a ring of sponge fingers around a bavarian cream and gave it a name honouring the Russian court; in America it was domesticated into something quite different -- a paper case lined with sponge and filled with sweetened whipped cream, sold by the piece from bakeries, confectioners and soda fountains. Recipes like this one, written for fifty at a time with weights beside the cup measures, belong to that trade rather than the home kitchen: The American Pastry Cook was aimed at hotel and restaurant pastry departments, where a cook needed to know how many sheets of sponge a stated batch of eggs would yield. The strawberry version is a seasonal variant, and the fact that the cream is handled in a separate article, and added only at serving, reflects a commercial reality -- cases and linings could be built in the morning, the perishable part added when the order came in.