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Tipsy Pudding
This may be made of any dry cake, sponge cake being preferred. Put a layer of raspberry or apricot jam at the bottom of a glass dish, place on it a layer of sponge cake, then a layer of chopped almonds, then repeat the layers. On the top instead of chopped almonds, stick almonds divided lengthwise. Saturate the whole well with sherry, or half sherry and half milk, and at time of serving pour over a good boiled custard.
This is a trifle under an older name, and the recipe assumes you already know how to make a boiled custard. The only real technique is restraint with the sherry and patience with the soaking.
- The hinge: soak, then waitThe cake benefits from a long soak, an hour or two or overnight, though the original says nothing about chilling or timing. Pour the custard over only at serving; added early it slackens into the cake and the layers disappear.
- How much sherryThe original gives no quantity, only "saturate the whole well." For a 2-quart glass dish that means on the order of a cup or more of liquid, poured slowly over the assembled layers a few tablespoons at a time so the top layer does not flood while the bottom stays dry. Half sherry and half milk gives a gentler, less boozy result, as noted.
- Which sherryA medium or cream sherry is what this expects; amontillado or oloroso will serve, though both are vinified dry and cream sherry is a sweetened oloroso. Dry fino tastes thin against the jam, and bottles sold as "cooking sherry" are usually salted.
- "Any dry cake"Stale is the point: fresh sponge turns to paste. Leave sponge or pound cake uncovered overnight, or use bought ladyfingers or Italian savoiardi, which are dry by design.
- Boiled custardDespite the name it must not boil. A stirred custard of 2 cups milk or cream, 4-6 egg yolks and 1/3 cup sugar, cooked over low heat or a water bath until it coats the spoon at about 170-175F, then strained and cooled. Above 180F it curdles.
- The almondsBlanch and skin whole almonds, then split them lengthwise with a small knife while still damp for the decorative top layer; the chopped almonds inside can be toasted lightly for more flavor.
- VesselA straight-sided glass bowl of 2 to 2 1/2 quarts, so the strata show; presumably why the recipe specifies glass.
- YieldEight to ten servings, spooned out rather than cut. It does not travel or portion neatly, and it is best the day it is finished.
"Tipsy" is the old English name for cake soaked in wine, and the dish sits in a family that includes tipsy cake, tipsy parson, tipsy squire and what is now generally called trifle; the whole group is usually traced to English recipes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in which stale cake or biscuit was revived with wine and covered in custard. The American South kept the "tipsy" names longest, often with a whole cake stuck full of split almonds so it bristled like a hedgehog. Its place in a chapter of cold desserts is practical: a household that baked its own sponge cake had leftovers going dry within days, and jam, sherry, almonds and eggs were pantry staples that turned that waste into a company dish requiring no oven. The recipe assumes its reader can make a boiled custard without being told, which is why the instruction here is only a single brief phrase.