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Almond Custard Pudding
Mrs. D.
Make a delicate sponge cake and stick it full of blanched almonds. Pour over a little wine, and then a rich vanilla custard.
Four lines and no quantities: this is shorthand for a tipsy cake, written for a cook who already knew how to make sponge and boiled custard. The points below fill in what Mrs. D. assumed.
- The hinge: the custard"A rich vanilla custard" means a stirred boiled custard, not a baked one — roughly 5 or 6 egg yolks and 2 tablespoons sugar to a pint of milk or half-and-half, cooked over low heat or a water bath until it coats the spoon, about 175-180F. Past 185F it scrambles; strain it as insurance and cool it before it goes over the cake.
- Blanched almondsPour boiling water over shelled almonds, stand 1 minute, and slip the skins off. Split each lengthwise into two spikes and drive them point-down into the cake so it bristles — about 1/2 cup of whole almonds covers an 8-inch cake. Dishes spiked this way were sometimes called a hedgehog for exactly that reason.
- "A little wine"Sherry, Madeira or sweet white wine, 1/3 to 1/2 cup for a single cake. The cake should be moistened through, not swimming; add it in spoonfuls and wait for each to soak in. The alcohol is not cooked off, so this is not a dish for children.
- The sponge cakeA plain foam sponge with no butter and no frosting, baked in a round pan at 350F. Day-old cake is better than fresh — it absorbs the wine without collapsing.
- Assembly and chillingSpike the cake, wet it with wine, then pour the barely warm custard over so it pools around the base. Refrigerate at least 3 hours, and no more than a day, before serving; the almonds soften and the custard thins if it sits longer.
- YieldAn 8-inch sponge with a pint of custard serves 8, cut in wedges with the custard spooned over.
This is the American parlor form of the English tipsy cake — sponge soaked in wine, spiked with split almonds, and drowned in boiled custard. It belongs to the same family as trifle, and the family resemblance is the point: all of them exist to make good use of sponge cake that has gone dry. Charity cookbooks of this kind were assembled from contributions by named local housewives and sold for a cause, which explains both the "Mrs. D." and the extreme brevity — contributors wrote for neighbors who already owned a sponge cake recipe and a custard recipe, so only the assembly needed saying.