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Birds' Nest Cake
4 OZS. (I cup) flour 4 ozs. (1 cup) cornstarch 4 ozs. (1/2 cup) sugar 1 teaspoonful baking powder Some apricot jam 8 OZS. (I cup) confectioners' sugar Some chopped almonds 4 ozs. (1/2 cup) butter Few drops green color Few candy eggs Beat up the yolks of eggs with the sugar until thick, then stir in the flour, cornstarch and baking powder. Beat up the whites of eggs and add them.
Pour the mixture into a round buttered and floured cake tin and bake in a moderate oven for thirty-five minutes. Have ready some slightly browned, coarsely chopped almonds. Remove a part of the center of the cake and replace it with a large candy egg. Spread the jam on the sides of the cake and sprinkle on the almonds. Rub the confectioners' sugar through a sieve into a basin, add the butter and beat to a smooth cream.
Add the green color drop by drop until the color is right. Chill the icing, then with a small bag and plain tube force it around the edge of the cake to represent the twigs of the nest.
Arrange some candy eggs around the border. 4 OZS. (I cup) flour
A separated-egg sponge dressed up as an Easter nest. The method is sound, but the ingredient list has been printed with the eggs left out and the flour line duplicated at the end, so read the instructions before you shop.
- The missing eggsThe list names no eggs at all, yet the method calls for beaten yolks and whites. A sponge on 4 oz flour, 4 oz cornstarch and 4 oz sugar would plausibly take something in the region of four eggs, but that is an editorial reading, not a stated quantity.
- Ounces are weights, not fluid ounces4 ozs. flour is 4 ounces by weight, about 115 g, which matches the book's own "1 cup" only loosely. Weigh if you can: flour, cornstarch and sugar at 115 g each, butter at 115 g, confectioners' sugar at 225 g.
- Moderate ovenUsually taken today as about 350F (175C), though the book states no temperature. No tin size is given either; thirty-five minutes suits a round tin of roughly 8 inches. The cake is done when it springs back and the edges just pull from the sides.
- Why half the flour is cornstarchCornstarch dilutes the gluten and gives the fine, dry, close crumb of a period sponge. Do not substitute more flour or the cake will be tougher than the style intends.
- Folding, not stirringThe yolk-sugar base should reach the ribbon stage, and the whites go in last by folding. The teaspoon of baking powder is insurance only; it will not rescue deflated whites.
- Hollowing the centerCut and lift out a shallow disc from the top center once the cake is fully cool. Cutting warm cake tears the crumb and the nest collapses inward.
- The buttercream225 g confectioners' sugar beaten smooth with 115 g butter. Chilling before piping is the point of the instruction, and on a warm day the piped twigs may need a second stint in the refrigerator to hold their shape.
- Green coloringPeriod colorings were generally liquid and weaker than modern gel color, which is far more concentrated; add gel on the tip of a toothpick rather than by drops, and keep it toward a muted moss green.
- YieldOne round cake, ten to twelve small servings. It is rich at the rim and plain in the middle, which is how the nest conceit works.
Nest cakes belong to the run of Easter novelties that turn up in confectioners' work and pastry chapters, helped along by ready-made sugar eggs and piping tubes. The base here is a straightforward sponge, half flour and half cornstarch, of the kind that turns up throughout English and American pudding chapters; everything that makes it a bird's nest is applied after baking, with jam as the glue, browned almonds as the rough outside of the nest and green buttercream piped in strands for the twigs.