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Breakfast Cakes
Dissolve in half a pint of warm milk half an ounce of German yeast, and stir in enough flour to make a batter; stand to rise, and then warm a quarter of a pound of butter, mixing it with a little milk and a teaspoonful of salt, together with the yolks of eight eggs; beat up well and make into a dough, with the remainder of two pounds of flour, knead lightly and form into cakes about two inches in thickness, place them in well-buttered hoops, laying the hoops on greased baking-sheets, and when the dough is nicely risen, place in a warm oven and bake. When cooked, cut into thick slices, and butter.
A rich, egg-yolk yeast dough raised in two stages and baked in rings — closer to a Sally Lunn or a brioche than to anything a modern cook would call a breakfast cake. The recipe assumes you know the sponge method and gives no times or temperatures.
- The hinge: keep the dough softWith eight yolks and a quarter pound of butter, this is a slack enriched dough that should be kneaded lightly, as the text says, and no more. Working in extra flour to make it tidy produces a dry, bready cake instead of the tender crumb the eggs are paying for.
- German yeastFresh compressed baker's yeast, sold in cakes. Half an ounce is about 14 g; substitute roughly 1½ teaspoons of instant dry yeast, or a scant 2 teaspoons of active dry proofed in the warm milk.
- MeasuresHalf a pint is one cup of milk. Two pounds of flour is about 7 cups, and part of it goes into the initial batter — the phrase "the remainder of two pounds" means the sponge flour counts toward the total, not on top of it.
- The spongeThe first stage is a batter sponge: milk, yeast and enough flour to make it the consistency of thick pancake batter. Give it 45 minutes to an hour in a warm room, until domed and visibly bubbled, before adding the butter, yolks and salt.
- HoopsMetal rings: bottomless tart rings or deep ring moulds. Crumpet or English muffin rings are about the right diameter (3 to 4 inches) but are usually too shallow for cakes two inches thick, which want a ring at least 2½ inches deep. Butter them well and set them on a greased sheet; the dough is soft enough to spread without them.
- A warm ovenIn period usage this sits below "moderate," so nearer 325°F than 350°F, though the book gives no equivalents of its own. Enriched, yolk-heavy dough colours fast, so a hot oven would set the crust before the centre cooked. Expect roughly 25 to 35 minutes for cakes this thick; the interior should read about 190°F.
- Second rise"When the dough is nicely risen" means the cakes have roughly doubled and nearly filled the hoops, typically 45 minutes to an hour at room temperature. Rich doughs rise slowly; rushing them in a warm spot melts the butter out.
- Yield and servingTwo pounds of flour makes eight to ten cakes of this size. They are meant to be split horizontally while warm, buttered and eaten at once — day-old cakes are best toasted.
Enriched yeast cakes baked in rings and served split and buttered were a fixture of the nineteenth-century breakfast and tea table on both sides of the Atlantic, the family that includes Sally Lunn, the Bath bun and the various "tea cakes" of English cookery. What marks this version is the yolks wo eight of them to two pounds of flour, with no whites wo which gives colour and richness without lightening the crumb. The instruction to use German yeast is a period detail worth noting: compressed fresh yeast, much of it produced by German and Austrian methods, was gaining ground on homemade brewer's-yeast and salt-rising leavens in American kitchens over the second half of the century. Hoops are generally said to have been standard equipment in a hotel bakeshop, where dozens of identical cakes had to come off a single sheet.