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Rolled Wafers (Cup butter cup powdered sugar)
¼ cup butter 1/2 cup powdered sugar ¼ cup milk ⅞ cup bread flour ½ teaspoon vanilla Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and milk drop by drop; then add flour and flavoring. Spread very thinly with a broad, long-bladed knife on a buttered inverted dripping-pan. Crease in three-inch squares, and bake in a slow oven until delicately browned. Place pan on back of range, cut squares apart with a sharp knife, and roll while warm in tubular or cornucopia shape. If squares become too brittle to roll, place in oven to soften. If rolled tubular shape, tie in bunches with narrow ribbon. These are very attractive, and may be served with sherbet, ice cream, or chocolate. If rolled cornucopia shape, they may be filled with whipped cream just before sending to table. Colored wafers may be made from this mixture by adding leaf green or fruit red. If colored green, flavor with one-fourth teaspoon almond and three-fourths teaspoon vanilla. If colored pink, flavor with rose. Colored wafers must be baked in a very slow oven and turned frequently, otherwise they will not be of the uniform color that is desired.
A thin batter spread on the back of a sheet pan and rolled hot into cigarettes or cones — the same technique as a French tuile or cigarette russe. Everything depends on working fast while the sheets are still pliable.
- The hinge: roll hotThe wafers stay flexible only briefly once off the heat. Bake in small batches, and use the book's own remedy — return the pan to the oven for a few seconds when the squares stiffen.
- Oven temperaturePeriod guides generally put a slow oven at roughly 300-325F, with "very slow" lower still, around 275F; the lower heat for the colored wafers presumably keeps the sugar from browning and masking the tint.
- Butter and sugar amountsThe butter and milk quantities are each a quarter cup (2 oz butter, 60 ml milk). Powdered sugar means confectioners' sugar, and bread flour is the flour these books normally specify in preference to pastry flour; its higher gluten would give the sheet more strength to be lifted and rolled without tearing.
- Dripping-panA dripping-pan was the shallow rectangular roasting pan that sat under a spit or joint. Use a heavy rimmed baking sheet, buttered, and spread the batter on the underside so the long knife has no rim in its way. A silicone mat or parchment works better still.
- Milk drop by dropThis is not fussiness. Added quickly, the milk breaks the creamed butter and the batter separates on the pan into greasy patches rather than an even film.
- "Back of range"On a coal range the rear of the cooktop was a warm holding zone, perhaps 150F. A very low oven with the door ajar, or an electric warming drawer, does the same job of keeping the cut squares soft while you roll.
- Coloring and flavoringLeaf green and fruit red were commercial liquid food colors; a drop or two of modern gel color goes further. Rose flavoring is rosewater or rose extract, still sold, and should be used sparingly — a quarter teaspoon in this quantity of batter is plenty.
- Yield and servingExpect roughly 18-24 three-inch wafers. They hold a day in an airtight tin but go limp in humidity; fill cornucopias with whipped cream only at the moment of serving, as the recipe insists.
Rolled wafers of this kind were often served with ices in American dining rooms of the 1890s and 1900s, and Fannie Farmer places them among the cookies and wafers. The technique resembles that of French pastry, where the same batter spread paper-thin and curled while hot yields tuiles and cigarettes; the ribbon-tied bundles are a period touch, suggesting a moment when the cooking school taught presentation as seriously as it taught proportion. The tinted and separately flavored versions — green with almond, pink with rose — seem to belong to the same era's fondness for color-coordinated desserts, when a luncheon table might be built entirely around one shade.