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Drop Cakes
Mrs. Arthurs.
One pint of ffour, one-half pound of butter, one-fourth pound of sifted sugar, half a nutmeg grated, a handful of currants, two eggs, and one teaspoonful of Cook's Friend baking powder; to be baked in a slack oven for ten minutes. The above quantity will make about thirty cakes.
A rich, short drop cookie in the Victorian manner, measured partly by volume and partly by weight. The proportions are workable as written once the units are translated.
- "One pint of ffour"A printer's slip for flour. A pint measure of flour is about 2 cups, roughly 250 g, scooped and levelled rather than sifted.
- Butter and sugar by weightHalf a pound of butter is 225 g (two US sticks); a quarter pound of sifted sugar is 115 g, about a scant 2/3 cup once sifted. The butter-to-flour ratio is very high, which is what makes these short and crumbly rather than cakey.
- Cook's Friend baking powderA Montreal-made brand of the period. Substitute one teaspoon of any modern double-acting baking powder; the older single-acting powders reacted mostly on wetting, so mix and bake without long delay.
- A slack ovenA cool oven, variously reckoned at somewhere around 275-325F; the book gives no figure. At that sort of heat, small drops of this rich dough may well need longer than the ten minutes given to set and colour at the edges.
- Half a nutmegA whole nutmeg grates to about two teaspoons, so half gives a full teaspoon for the batch. That is assertive by current tastes; half that amount is plenty if the nutmeg is fresh.
- A handful of currantsRead as 50-75 g of dried Zante currants, not fresh red or black currants. Toss them in a spoonful of the measured flour so they do not sink through the soft dough.
- Method the recipe assumesCream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then work in the flour, powder, nutmeg and fruit. Drop teaspoonfuls well apart on a lined sheet; the dough spreads.
- YieldThirty cakes as stated. The dough comes to something like 700 g in all, so each drop is around 20-25 g, nearer a tablespoonful than a teaspoonful; fewer, larger cakes will need a little more time.
The Home Cook Book was compiled in Toronto in the 1870s by "ladies of Toronto and chief cities and towns in Canada" and sold in aid of the Hospital for Sick Children, an early and notably successful example of the North American charity cookbook built from signed household contributions. "Drop cakes" is an older name for what would now be called a cookie: a batter stiff enough to hold its shape when dropped from a spoon, as distinct from a rolled and cut biscuit. The call for Cook's Friend baking powder, made in Montreal, is a small period marker in itself; named brands appear in recipes of this date alongside generic calls for "baking powder," and books of this kind commonly carried advertisements from such manufacturers.