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Butterflies
You will get at the confectioner's small round cakes that are smooth on the top; they are plain, and are about two and one-half inches across. Take one and cut it in halves, separating the top from the bottom. Cut the top pieces right across; you have now two half moons. Put some honey along the one straight edge of each half moon and stick it by that on the lower piece of cake, a little to one side. Do the same with the second half moon, so that they both stick up, not unlike wings. Fill the space between with a thick mixture of chopped almonds rolled in honey, and place two strips of angelica poking forward to suggest antennae. A good nougat will answer instead of the honey.
This is an assembly job rather than a baking recipe: the cake is bought, and everything depends on how you cut and prop it. Read it as instructions for what British bakers still call butterfly cakes, built from a flat round instead of a cupcake.
- The bought cakeA plain, smooth-topped round about two and a half inches across suggests a small sponge or plain butter cake, unglazed and unfrosted, though the recipe specifies nothing beyond size and a smooth top. Supermarket sponge flan bases cut with a cutter work, as do small plain butter cakes; anything with a domed or cracked top will not split cleanly.
- Splitting itSlice the round horizontally with a long serrated knife, using a sawing motion and no downward pressure, then cut the top disc straight across into two half-moons. Chilling the cake for twenty minutes firms the crumb and stops it tearing.
- Honey as mortarHoney is the adhesive here, and thin runny honey will slide. Use a set or creamed honey, or warm ordinary honey and let it cool to a thick, tacky consistency before piping a line along each cut edge.
- Nougat insteadThe "good nougat" of the last line probably means a soft almond nougat or nougat paste, warmed just enough to spread. The recipe does not say whether it stands in for the adhesive honey, the honey in the filling, or both. It may well hold better than honey in a warm room.
- The fillingThe recipe gives no quantities; roughly a tablespoon of finely chopped almonds to two teaspoons of honey per cake gives a paste stiff enough to hold the wings apart. Toasting the almonds first is an optional addition, not something the original calls for.
- AngelicaCandied angelica stem, once a standard decorating cupboard item, is now sold mainly by specialist bakery suppliers. Thin strips of candied citron peel or lengths of dried spaghetti-thin liquorice root will read the same on the plate; skip them rather than substitute something soft, since antennae need to stand up.
- Yield and servingOne cake makes one butterfly, so count one or two per person at tea. Assemble within a couple of hours of serving, as the honey gradually soaks the crumb and the wings settle.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled in England in 1915 from recipes contributed by Belgian refugees, and sold on behalf of relief funds after the German invasion; its charm and its limitation is that many entries appear to have been set down from memory by people who no longer had their own kitchens. That shows here. A patissier's confection is reconstructed around a cake the cook is told to buy rather than bake, a division of labour often said to have been common in Belgian and French households, where the neighbourhood patisserie supplied the base and the family did the decorating. Butterfly cakes built by splitting a top and propping the halves as wings are familiar in Britain in cupcake form, recorded from the earlier twentieth century; angelica, the candied stem of Angelica archangelica, was the standard green trim of the period and appears in Victorian and Edwardian baking for everything from antennae to leaves.