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Creams (Finger sack and tube)
finger sack and tube) with the batter and press out finger lengths on to a sheet of manilla paper, sift powdered sugar over, shake off surplus and lay the sheet on a baking pan; the sheet on a baking pan; bake about six minutes, dampen the paper cakes off and place by twos together. To make the "Dixie" cheese cakes, drop the above cake mixture in round cakes rather than finger-shaped, on sheet of paper, dredge with sugar, place paper in pan, bake, remove as above and spread under side of each cake with lemon mixture and place two together. They are perfectly delicious and served with ice cream make an elegant dessert.
LEMON CHEESE CAKES. - Mix gently four tablespoons each white sugar and butter, add yolks of two eggs, white of one, grated rind of three lembutter, add yolks of two eggs, white of one, grated rind of three lemons, juice of one and a half, one small savory or sponge biscuit, some almonds blanched and pounded, three tablespoons of brandy; mix well and bake in tart tins lined with a rich puff paste, then cover with a meringue made of the well frothed white of one egg mixed lightly with one tablespoon sugar; return to oven and brown delicately.
Two related items sit here: sponge fingers piped and sandwiched in pairs, and the lemon filling that turns them into "Dixie" cheese cakes or fills small tarts. The lemon mixture is the part given in full.
- Finger sack and tubeThis is a cloth piping bag with a plain metal tip. A modern piping bag with a half-inch round tip does the same work; pipe fingers about three inches long, well apart, since they spread.
- Manilla paperPlain unwaxed brown paper, used because it could be dampened from beneath to release the baked cakes. Parchment is the modern substitute and needs no dampening, though the crisp shell will be slightly different.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no temperature; a six-minute bake implies a fairly hot oven, and something in the region of 400F is a reasonable modern guess. Watch them: they are done when the surface is set and barely coloured, and another minute makes them dry.
- The sugar dredgingSifting powdered sugar over and shaking off the surplus is what gives sponge fingers their pearled, faintly crackled top. Do it immediately before baking, not in advance, or the sugar dissolves into the batter.
- "Lemon cheese cakes" contain no cheeseLemon cheese is an old English name for lemon curd. The mixture here is butter, sugar, eggs and lemon baked in pastry, in the tradition of curd tarts that once used real curds and later dropped them.
- Savory biscuitRead this as savoy biscuit, a dry sponge biscuit closely related to the finger cakes above. Its crumb is there to bind and thicken the lemon mixture; a plain ladyfinger or a slice of dry sponge cake, crumbled fine, does the same.
- Egg proportionsTwo yolks and one white for the filling, then the remaining single white for the meringue. Beat that white to soft peaks before folding in the tablespoon of sugar, or the meringue will weep on the tart.
- Tins and quantityTart tins here means small individual patty tins, not one large shell. The recipe gives no yield, and the quantity of filling is small.
- Browning the meringue'Brown delicately' means a short return to a moderate oven, or a few minutes under a low broiler with the door watched, just until coloured. The filling is already set, so you are only colouring the top.
Lemon cheese cakes belong to a long line of English curd tarts that passed into American books: the name survived after the curds themselves were replaced by a butter-sugar-egg-lemon mixture thickened with crumbled biscuit. The sponge fingers paired with them are close kin to the savoy biscuits of the confectioner's repertoire, and the use of a piping bag and tube here shows that repertoire at work. The book itself suggests serving them with ice cream as 'an elegant dessert.'