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Tipsy Cake
1081. Take a stale sponge-cake of full size, pierce it with holes, making them with a knitting-pin. Pour over by degrees with a spoon half a pint of raisin-wine and a wine-glass of brandy mixed. When this quantity is soaked up, which will require the wine to be ladled up from the bottom, stick it thickly over with blanched almonds cut in points or spikes. Just before it goes to table pour over it a thick custard, or whipped cream. Seven or eight sponge biscuits may be boiled up and done the same way, or, by way of variety, the cake may be sliced with preserve spread between each layer, and then finish as above.
A Victorian trifle in its earlier, undeconstructed form: a whole sponge cake saturated with fortified wine and brandy, spiked with almonds and flooded with custard. Almost everything depends on the cake being dry enough to drink.
- Stale cake is the pointA fresh sponge collapses into paste as soon as the wine hits it. Use a plain sponge (not a butter cake) left uncovered a day or two, or dried briefly in a 300F oven and cooled.
- The liquid measuresThis is a British book, so half a pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. A wine-glass at this date is roughly 2 fl oz. Together that is a substantial soak for one cake, which is why it goes on by degrees.
- Raisin wineA homemade sweet wine fermented from raisins, once common in country households and now effectively gone. A sweet sherry is the closest substitute, and some later versions of this dish call for sherry; Madeira or a sweet Marsala also work.
- Ladling from the bottomThe cake will not absorb everything at once. Set it in a deep dish with a rim, spoon the liquid over in stages, and keep returning what pools underneath until the sponge is uniformly wet through to the centre.
- The almondsBlanched almonds cut lengthways into slivers and pushed in point-first, hedgehog fashion. Slice them yourself from whole blanched nuts; commercial flaked almonds are too thin to stand up.
- The custard"A thick custard" here means a stirred pouring custard, egg yolks, sugar and milk or cream cooked to about 175-180F until it coats a spoon. Cool it before pouring or it will melt the assembly.
- Assemble lateThe alcohol does not cook off, and the cake keeps softening. Soak and stud it several hours ahead if you like, but add the custard or whipped cream shortly before serving as directed.
- YieldA full-sized sponge served this way should give roughly eight to ten portions, spooned out rather than cut.
Tipsy cake shares its almond spikes with the eighteenth-century almond-studded 'hedgehog' dishes, and shares its soaked sponge and custard with the trifle. Raisin wine, called for here, was a domestic product made from imported dried fruit. The final variation, slicing the cake and spreading preserve between the layers, brings the dish very close to a trifle.