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Vanity Cake
Mrs. Hamilton.
Two eggs, one cup flour rolled thin as a wafer; cut in patterns; boiled in lard.
Three lines and four words of method — this is a memory jog for someone who already knew the dough, not a set of instructions. What it makes is a wafer-thin fried pastry, crisp and blistered, eaten dusted with sugar.
- "Boiled in lard" means deep-friedNineteenth-century cooks used "boil" for anything cooked in bubbling fat. The lard should sit at 360-375F; below that the pastry drinks fat and turns heavy, above it the thin scraps colour before they crisp.
- The dough needs more flour than statedTwo eggs to one cup of flour gives a slack batter-dough that cannot be rolled wafer-thin. Expect to work in flour until you have a stiff, smooth, noodle-like dough — closer to a cup and a half or more depending on egg size.
- There is no sugar in itSweetness would have come afterward, from a dredging of powdered sugar while the cakes were still warm. A pinch of salt in the dough is worth adding; the original omits it.
- "Thin as a wafer" is the whole recipeRoll until the dough is translucent and you can see the board through it. Thick pieces puff into tough biscuits rather than shattering crisply.
- "Cut in patterns"Diamonds, strips with a slit through the middle and one end pulled back through, or rounds cut with a glass. A fluted pastry wheel gives a frilled edge.
- Frying timeSeconds, not minutes — roughly 20 to 30 seconds a side. They are done when pale gold and blistered; they darken fast.
- FatLard gives the cleanest flavour and the crispest result, but any neutral fat with a high smoke point works. Drain on paper, not on a cloth, and sugar them warm.
- YieldOne cup of flour rolled out this thin makes a large bowlful — roughly three to four dozen small pieces. They are best the day they are made.
Vanity cakes belong to a large family of fried scrap-dough pastries that turn up wherever eggs, flour and a kettle of fat were on hand: Pennsylvania Dutch nothings, Scandinavian fattigmann and rosettes, and Italian crostoli. The names all make the same joke 's's — vanity, nothings, poor man's cakes — about a confection that is mostly air. The Home Cook Book, compiled in Chicago in the 1870s and sold to raise money for the Home for the Friendless, printed recipes credited by name; Mrs. Hamilton wrote down what she needed to remember and no more, which is why the page reads like shorthand. Fried pastries of this kind were holiday and company food in households that had a fat kettle going anyway for doughnuts and crullers.