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Dessert Cakes

ICE WAFERS, &c.

Some recipes under Biscuits - Sweet, and under Rusks are suitable for Dessert. Banbury Cakes.

Beat 14 lb. butter to a cream, mix with ½ lb. chopped candied peel, 1 lb. currants, 1½ oz. cinnamon, ¼ oz. allspice, a little sugar; mix well, and keep in covered jar to use in sandwiches of puff paste (see Paste and Pastry). "Bows" to serve with a Cream. 2 eggs and their weight in sugar, and the weight of one only in flour. Mix like a sponge cake and flavour with orange-flower water or vanilla. Bake, twist, and finish in the screen.

Chocolate Cakes - Portmore. (Mrs. Jamieson. 1888.) 1½ lb. chocolate grated very smooth. Beat well the whites of 2 eggs (but not to snow); mix them into the chocolate with as much sifted sugar as will make them into a stiff paste, strew the board with sugar, and roll out a very little bit at a time. Cut with a fluted cutter, and bake in a moderate oven on a baking tin dusted with flour. "Draughtsmen" Cakes.

Use the same paste, but without seeds, as Cataldi's Seed Cake No. 1. He makes these little cakes for dessert, so called from their shape, but not quite so thick as real draughtsmen. He ices them, some white, some a delicate rose colour with cochineal, and flavours one colour with vanilla and the other with essence of kernels. Gingerbread Biscuits. No. 1. (Mrs. Edgar Corrie's and Lady Buchan's.) These are both made the same way, but the ingredients for Mrs. Corrie's are: 1 lb. of treacle, 1 lb. of brown sugar, 2½ lbs. of flour, ¼ lb. of butter, and 2 ozs. of ginger; while Lady Buchan uses 134 lbs. of treacle, 2 eggs, 1 oz. ground ginger, 1½ lbs. flour, 1 teacupful warm milk, 5 ozs. butter, 1 oz. ground carraways, 2 ozs. candied peel, 2 ozs. blanched almonds, 2 ozs. ground rice, and 2 ozs. moist sugar. In preparing ingredients the treacle, sugar and butter should be melted together and then mixed with the flour and ginger, which should be previously well mixed together. When all is well mixed it must cool and be well beaten with the rolling pin till it can be made into rather small cakes, which will become much thinner when baked. They should not be rolled or cut, but made up with the hand. Gingerbread Biscuits. No. 2. "Ormskirk Gingerbread Nuts." (Mrs. Jackson.) 2 lbs. flour; rub into it 3/4 lb. butter; then add 1 lb. treacle, 1 lb. sugar, 2 fresh eggs well beaten, 2 ozs. best powdered ginger, and 2 ozs. candied lemon peel chopped. Mix all well, make it in shapes and bake very crisp to a light brown the length and shape of a Savoy biscuit, or in nuts, or like a short thick stick of sealing wax. Another copy gives these ingredients: 2 lbs. flour, 1 lb. treacle, 1 lb. sugar, 1 lb. butter clarified, 1 oz. ginger, 1 oz. carraway seeds, ¼ oz. sifted cinnamon, candied citron, and orange peel. Gingerbread Biscuits. No. 3. For Luncheon. (Mrs. Weston, 8, Hyde Park Gardens.) This gingerbread biscuit recipe is marked "best" by Lady Clark. 1 lb. flour, 3 lb. butter, ½ lb. moist sugar, 2 ozs. candied orange or lemon peel chopped very fine, from ½ oz. to 1 oz. powdered ginger. Mix all well together with as much treacle (or golden syrup is better) as will make it into a stiff, smooth paste. They are about 6½ ins. long, 1 in. broad, and as thick as a ginger "nut."

Baked a light brown.

Gingerbread Biscuits. No. 4. (Mrs. Brandreth.) Mix well together, dry, 1 lb. of flour and ¼ lb. of butter and 34 oz. of ginger; then add 1 lb. of treacle, and mix all well together. Roll out very thin, and cut it out in shapes. Bake in a quick oven.

Gingerbread Nuts - "Birk Hall"; for Dessert. (As made by Mrs. Hooper.) 7 ozs. fresh butter to ¼ lb. of treacle melted together; add gradually ¼ lb. flour, 1½ oz. of ginger, 2 ozs. of sugar, and ½ oz. of chopped candied lemon peel. Work all well together.

Take up ½ teaspoonful at a time, and put it by itself on the baking sheet well apart from the others, as it may run.

When baked they should be the size of the top of a teacup, and nearly as thin as brandy snaps.

Bake 5 minutes a light brown.

Ginger Cakes. No. 1. (Trebah.) These should be as thin as possible, "café au lait" in colour, and mixed with as little milk as possible, to make them crisp.

Proportions are 1 lb. of flour to ½ lb. of pounded sugar and 4 ozs. butter, 2 teaspoonfuls powdered ginger. Mix with a little milk, roll out as thin as possible, and cut with a cutter; then dab a little water on the top of each cake, and before you bake, powder over with sugar, so that the tops are glazed. The Trebah shape is a quatrefoil.

Ginger Cakes. No. 2. (Miss Woodington.) 6 ozs. flour, 4 ozs. powdered sugar, 2 ozs. butter, 1 tablespoonful powdered ginger, rubbed well together and made into a stiff paste. Shape and bake. Ginger Rocks. (As altered by Mrs. Wellington. 1875.) Beat well 3 yolks of egg; whisk up stiffly 2 whites; keep them separate. Dry well ½ lb. flour, and into it mix 1½ oz. powdered ginger, 1 oz. candied orange peel; chopped fine.

Now mix ¹½ lb. pounded sugar into the yolks of egg. Add to it first the chopped peel, then the gingered flour, and then rub in 3 ozs. butter, warmed, but not melted. Lastly, mix in the whisked whites.

Take up a piece the size of a walnut, and, after placing on a buttered baking sheet, shape it roughly with a fork. Bake a nice pale brown in a slow oven. More peel or more ginger could be added if liked, for the cakes should taste hot. Ground Rice Cakes. No. 1. 1½ lb. ground rice, ½ lb. loaf sugar pounded, 8 drops of essence of almonds, 4 or 5 eggs beaten for 1½ hour. The mixture is dropped on buttered tins or baked in a buttered and sugared mould, with buttered paper laid on the top. Ground Rice Cakes. No. 2. Duntrum. (Miss Graham. 1887.) Beat the yolks of 8 eggs with ½ lb. pounded sugar till they are quite light; then add ¼ lb. rice flour and ¼ lb. ground rice, 6 ozs. butter beaten to a cream, and a glass of brandy; flavour with lemon or vanilla. Dust tartlet pans with flour, or grease with a very little fresh olive oil. Fill them rather more than half full, and bake in a rather quick oven. "Jumbles." (Wootton Lodge.) 10 ozs. finest flour, 7 ozs. pounded sugar, 1 oz. sweet almonds, with 6 bitter ones, pounded very fine, 6 ozs. of fresh butter.

Rub the butter into the flour very thoroughly; then add the sugar and almonds; mix these ingredients with 1 egg well beaten.

Bake in tins of different forms; the Wootton shape was like an & or knot. "Madeleines."

These are baked in bun pans, and taste like Queen cakes. To make, omit carraways in recipe for Seed Cake, No. 1, and to the mixture add a little candied peel chopped fine and a few currants. Lady Clark thought they should be glazed at the top, and were best without currants. They do not get stale as buns do. "Ormskirk Gingerbread Nuts." See Gingerbread Biscuits, No. 2. Ratafia Drops. (Cataldi.) ¼ lb. almonds (5 or 6 bitter at the most, all the rest sweet) well pounded and mixed with white of egg. Next add 14 lb. pounded sugar, mixing it thoroughly with the almond paste. Cataldi also flavours with vanilla, but this is optional. Drop them through a funnel on to wafer paper, and bake.

Rock Carraway Cakes. ¼ lb. of butter, ¼ lb. flour, ¼ lb. sugar, ½ teaspoonful of baking powder, 1 egg, a little chopped peel, and a few carraway seeds. Add a little milk to mix. Bake in a slow oven.

Wafers for Ices. (Cataldi.) 4 ozs. flour with 2 ozs. sugar, together in a basin; mix to a paste with a little cream. The best flavour is orange-flower water or vanilla.

Have the wafer tongs hot, grease them, put in the paste, close the tongs, and cook over a charcoal fire if possible. They are rolled up quite tight, and as thin as possible the length of a pencil, coffee coloured, and very crisp. A half-sheet of paper tightly rolled represents the shape.

If you wish to use the wafers as a Sweet Dish fill them with cream "à la Chantilly," twist them into cornucopias, and edge them with coloured sugar stuck on with egg. To make all wafers crisp, avoid salt; it makes them attract moisture. Flavour or keep plain, as you may prefer.

Grease the wafer tongs with cream, butter, or bacon; different cooks prefer these different things. When baked let them get quite cold; then put at once into a tin box. Before dishing, dry them a few minutes in the meat screen, but do not send up warm. (For Ices see Sweet Dishes and for other Wafer Recipes see Biscuits - Sweet.) Almond Rusks. (Mrs. Tomsett. 1889.) For dessert.