SC - Excellent Small Cakes, Digby

[Tom Bilodeau]

Greetings, all!

Sorry for not adding my redaction of digby cakes sooner.  I have heard that my
redaction has recently been exported to Trimaris for a feast and whenever I make
these cakes, I never have any to take home.  I don't use currants as they are
really hard to find in the DC area and I have success with using baking raisins
instead.

As Anahita al-shazhiyya said, the small cakes ae more like biscuits. I use an
ale glass to punch out circular biscuits and for Atlantian 12th Night in a month
or so, I will use a seahorse cutter on these cakes..

Here is my recipe for Digby's small cakes:

Through a few trial batches, I found that I needed to increase the table cream
to 4 tablespoons (.5 cup) so I could make the ingredients mix into a dough. I
increased the ground nutmeg to 1 tablespoon so there was a distinct “nutty”
taste to the cakes. I also have substituted baking raisins for the currants as
currants are not always available at the grocer’s.  I also used dry sherry since
a bottle of sack is about $30. When I make these cakes, I used a lightly floured
flat surface and roll out the dough or ‘paste’ to the “handsbreath thickness”.
To produce uniform sized cakes, I use an ale glass to cut out the cakes. I found
that I got a better cake when I would bake them for 25 minutes at 350 degrees.
The time is dependent upon each cook’s individual oven.

My redaction of Digby has more liquids than Duke Cariadoc’s:

3 c flour
¾ c sugar
3 c currants or baking raisins
1 ¾ sticks butter
4 T cream
1 egg yolk
1 T nutmeg
2 t sherry

For icing the cakes, I also experimented with Duke Cariadoc’s redaction. I
changed it from 1/3 c of sugar to use ½ cup of powdered sugar and enough water
so you can spread it on the cakes as soon as they come out of the oven. Powdered
sugar will dissolve faster in warm water. A pastry brush is good for painting
each cake with the sugar glaze.

~Tirloch

Glenda Robinson wrote:

> Firstly 'small cakes' when Digby was around most often referred to what
> English/Australians etc now call biscuits (or the German/US people call
> cookies). Just to make sure the terminologies are synchronised...
>
> I've made these cakes many times now. The recipe makes 150 biscuits about 2"
> wide. First hint here is to make it in 1/3 batches, which will suit our
> modern food processing items (bowls, mixers, whatever). I can never quite
> get the amount of currants in the batch , so I end up using a bit over 3/4
> of the said amount, as any more fall out and make my kitchen floor a squishy
> mess. I also use a tad more cream (could be that they had bigger spoons, I
> don't know) to get the dough to a workable consistency. If you're going to
> work with a food processor for the dough (I do), put the currants in last.
>
> This recipe you have doesn't have all the hints in the original. You may
> want to take a look at it below... I find the heating of the dough makes it
> dead easy to roll into balls, and gets the dough forming properly.
>
> >From my reading of the recipe, 'ice them with sugar' doesn't necessarily
> mean what we call a sugar icing (many terminologies have changed over the
> years). I find that a generous 'icing' (what I call a 'dusting') of sugar
> IMMEDIATELY on removal from the oven makes for a beautiful biscuit, and the
> amount of currants in the biscuit makes them really sweet anyway. I think a
> major sugar icing would make them sickly, but I haven't tried it - I think
> it'd look odd too, as the end result is not a smooth surface with all those
> currants.
>
> You HAVE to prick them FULL of holes. Can't stress this enough. Helps the
> dough to rise. I forgot to do one tray-full once, and they turned out really
> hard.
>
> Don't know how the rectangular ones would go. Give it a try and see (they
> won't go to waste :-) ), but I think the round ones work really well, as
> they're crispy on the outside, and still slightly chewy in the middle.
>
> Can't help you with cooking time. I just cook them till they're done, but I
> cook them at 200C or so, which, if I remember, is a little hotter than 350F
> (the recipe says a quick (hot) oven).
>
> I would make about 2-3 each person. In my experience they're very popular.
>
> Glenda.
>
> Here's the original:
>
> Take three pound of very fine flower well dried by the fire, and put to it a
> pound and a half of loaf sugar sifted in a very fine sieve and dried; 3
> pounds of currants well washed, and dried in a cloth and set by the fire;
> when your flour is well mixed with the sugar and currants, you must put in
> it a pound and a half of unmelted butter, ten spoonfuls of cream, with the
> yolks of three newlaid eggs beat with it, one nutmeg; and if you please,
> three spoonfuls of sack. When you have wrought your paste well, you must put
> it in a cloth, and set it in a dish before the fire, till it be through
> warm. Then make them up in little cakes, and prick them full of holes; you
> must bake them in a quick oven unclosed. Afterwards ice them over with
> sugar. The cakes should be about the bigness of a hand breadth and thin; of
> the size of the sugar cakes sold at Barnet.
>
> (I pinched this from Cariadoc's miscellany rather than retyping - they think
> it should be iced as we think of icing, but I don't agree)
>
> Glenda.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> > Below is the recipe pretty much as it is in Digby. I'm feeding about
> > 80 people, and there will be two other desserts, a Boar Head sotiltie
> > of pretty much period gingerbread covered with marzipan, and "Pies of
> > Raw Pears"  from 15th c. edition of "Le Viandier of Guillaume Tirel
> > dit Taillevent", as published in "The Medieval Kitchen by Redon, et
> > al.
> >
> > 1) Will this make enough for 80 people - assuming more-or-less one
> > for everyone, but that not everyone will want one...
> >
> > 2) is this complete enough to cook from? I've added an estimated time
> > and temperature for baking, but i've never made these...
> >
> > 3) I'm thinking of rolling it out into jelly roll pans, scoring the
> > dough into rectangles, baking, then separating and icing, rather than
> > making many small cakes. Is this likely to work?
> >
> > 4) any other helpful hints, retoolings, etc. from those who have made
> them?
> >
> > Digby's Excellent Small Cakes
> >
> > Cakes:
> > 3 lb flour 1-1/2 lb sugar 3 lb currants
> > 1-1/2 lb butter, softened 10 spoonfuls cream 3 egg yolks, beaten
> > 1 nutmeg 3 spoonfuls Sack
> > Mix together dry ingredients & currants. Mix together wet ingredients
> > & nutmeg. Mix both together. "Make into little cakes and prick them
> > full of holes". [I add: Bake 15 min. at 350° F.]
> >
> > Icing
> > 1-1/2 lb. Powdered Sugar 5 Egg Whites, beaten 2 or 3 spoons Rosewater
> > Beat all together. Ice cakes when fresh out of the oven.
> >
> > Thanks for any help. The Feast is on Sunday December 10,
> >
> > Anahita al-shazhiyya
> >
>
> ============================================================================
>
> 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".
>
> ============================================================================