SC - Recipe needed

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Kerri Canepa wrote:
> 
> Is there an authentic wafer recipe? I'd like to have time to play with making
> wafers before the real thing.
> 
> Kerri
> Cedrin Etainnighean, OL

In addition to the redaction of the Menagier's recipe in "Pleyn Delit",
I posted this several months ago, and happened to have it sitting around
on disk:

> Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 02:01:53 -0500
> From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
> Subject: SC - Quick and Dirty Wafer Redaction
> 
> I don't recall if this has been worked on or commented on by anybody on
> the list, but I had occasion to make some wafers for an event I'm going
> to Saturday, and I figured an account of the proceedings might be
> helpful to someone.
> 
> >From Gervase Markham's "The English Hus-Wife", 1615, Michael Best
> edition, ©1986 McGill-Queens University Press, Kingston and Montreal:
> 
> "To make wafers
> 
>         To make the best wafers, take the finest wheat flour you can get, and
> mix it with cream, the yolks of eggs, rose-water, sugar, and cinnamon
> till it be a little thicker than pancake batter; and then, warming your
> wafer irons on a charcoal fire, anoint them first with sweet butter, and
> then lay your batter and press it, and bake it white or brown at your pleasure."
> 
> After consulting a few Italian pizzelle recipes for some basic
> proportions, I ended up with the following:
> 
> 3 cups (~450 grams plain) all-purpose flour
> 1 U.S. pint (~500 grams) heavy cream
> 6 large egg yolks, beaten
> 1/4 - 1/2 cup (60 - 120 grams) rosewater
> 1 cup (~250 grams) sugar
> 1/8 teaspoon (~1 ml) ground cinnamon
> pinch salt
> 
> Sift the flour, cinnamon, and the salt together, set aside. Beat the egg
> yolks and sugar together until light and bright yellow. Add the cream
> and 1/4 cup (60 grams) rosewater, mix thoroughly. Fold the dry
> ingredients into the liquid. If the batter is too thick, you can thin it
> with more rosewater until it is clearly a soft batter but too thick to
> easily pour: your basic American "cream" cake batter.
> 
> Heat a pizzelle or other wafer iron for two or three minutes; if it's
> the kind that you sit on a stove burner, heat each side for two minutes.
> Brush a little melted butter on the inside of the irons, and spoon an
> appropriate amount of batter into the irons. You'll need to experiment
> to get the exact amount and placement right. My old-fashioned 5-inch
> pizzelle iron uses a heaping teaspoon of batter (roughly a level
> dessertspoon for those that use such measures). Bake till golden, and be
> aware that the wafers will continue to brown a bit after they come out
> of the irons. Cool on a cake rack until crispy or roll into tubes or
> cones while hot and flexible. Makes about three dozen, depending on the
> size of the iron, and the obvious necessity to hide several that are
> unevenly browned by immediately eating them. You have your reputation to
> consider, after all.
> 
> Historically, most of the wafers eaten in period Europe appear not to
> have been very sweet, but I've used a fair amount of sugar both to
> appease the tastes of those who will look at a wafer and see a cookie,
> and to achieve a crisp but tender, sort of brittle, product.
> Un-or-barely-sweetened wafers, such as the cheese wafers mentioned in Le
> Menagier de Paris, should probably be made with a much softer flour than
> AP, probably some kind of pastry flour would be the way to get them
> decently crisp without a lot of sugar. AP tends to be slightly glutinous
> in this wafer when unsweetened, especially when using dilute or
> secondary shortening sources like egg yolks and cream. Of course, we
> can't really be sure how crispy wafers were supposed to get in period, either.
> 
> If you manage to bring leftovers home from events, they make excellent
> ice cream sandwiches... .
> 
> Adamantius

- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================