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Genoise Aux Confitures
Four eggs, quarter pound granulated sugar, quarter pound sifted flour, two ounces melted butter and a teaspoon vanilla essence. Break the eggs into a small copper basin, add the sugar; place the bottom of the basin into another basin containing lukewarm water two inches high. Briskly whip the eggs and sugar for twelve minutes, or until of a good consistency. Remove the basin from the water, add the flour, lightly mix with a skimmer, add the butter and vanilla, gently mix again. Butter the inside of a pastry pan, then cover the bottom of the pan with a sheet of lightly buttered paper; pour all the preparation over the paper. Place in a slow oven to bake for twenty minutes. Remove from the oven, lay the pan in a cool place for fifteen minutes. Turn it on a table, remove the paper. Split the cake in two, crosswise. Spread two tablespoons currant jelly on top of one half, place the other half over it. Dredge a little powdered sugar over. Cut it into six even pieces, dress on a folded napkin and serve.
N. B. Remnants of any kind of cakes should be placed in a tin, covered up, and kept in a dry place, and will always come handy for pudding purposes, etc.
A plain genoise — whole eggs warmed and whipped to a foam, with flour and melted butter folded in — filled with currant jelly. Everything depends on how much air you build and how little of it you lose in the last minute of mixing.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThere is no chemical leavening here; the rise is entirely the egg foam. Add the flour in two or three additions with a wide spatula, cutting down and lifting, and stop the moment no dry streaks remain.
- The butter needs a bufferTwo ounces of melted butter poured straight into a whipped foam will collapse a good deal of it. Stir a large spoonful of the batter into the warm (not hot) butter first, then fold that lightened mixture back in.
- Weights in cupsA quarter pound of sugar is about 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (115 g); a quarter pound of sifted flour is a scant cup (115 g); two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons. Weigh if you can — sifted flour measured by volume varies badly.
- The water bath and the whippingThe copper basin over lukewarm water is a bain-marie: it should bring the eggs to about body temperature, no hotter, or they will set at the edges. Twelve minutes is a hand-whisk figure; a stand mixer reaches the ribbon stage — batter falling in a thick trail that sits on the surface for a few seconds — in five to seven minutes off the heat.
- Slow oven'Slow oven' in this period is usually reckoned somewhere around 250-325°F; the book gives no temperature. For a thin sheet baked in twenty minutes, 325°F to 350°F gives a better result today; the cake is done when it springs back and the edges just pull from the pan.