kids in kitchen, was: SC - Worst feast ever...

[Jeffrey Miller]

This post is to the above persons for developing the recipe for "Fine Cakes". 
I will be incorporating them in the Chaucerian Tavern feast I am doing next 
month. I wanted to post my conclusion of the information they have presented 
me. 
Hauviette

Fine Cakes

I wanted to reproduce a recipe that emulated Chaucers “cookie””  and frequent 
mentions of “cakes” , however there are no recipes that originate from the 
period of Chaucers tales to work from. As such , I turned to a later period 
source for a recipe which I have reproduced below.

To make fine cakes 
John Partridge [The widowes Treasure] in Lorna J. Sass's "To the Queen's 
Taste, compliments of Master Bear.
 Take a quantity of fine wheate Flower, and put it in an earthen pot.  Stop 
it close and set it in an Oven, and bake it as long as you would a pasty of 
Venison, and when it baked it will be full of clods.  Then searce your flower 
through a fine sercer.  Then take clouted Creame or sweet butter, but Creame 
is best: then take sugar, cloves,mace, >saffron and yolks of eggs, so much as 
wil seeme to season your flower.
Then put these things into the Creame, temper all together.  Then put thereto 
your flower.  So make your cakes.  The paste will be very short; therefore 
make them very little.  Lay paper under them.

This recipe and it’s development must be credited to three individuals who 
are members of the SCA. First is Master Bear, who’s expertise as a 
professional baker is invaluable and he has laid out the basic ground work 
for the recipe and also explains it’s rational. Secondly, is Dame Aoife who 
is a consumate SCA cook whose experience with dairy seems unmatched in my 
opinion. Finally , there is Lord Bogdan who is also an excellent SCA cook who 
constantly looks for challenges to his knowledge and skill. It is essentially 
his recipe that I am working from. I do not pretend to have developed this 
recipe on my own although the thorough instructions of the original leave 
little to be confused.  I have chosen to use butter instead of clotted cream 
as I see my Taverness having access to sweet butter and I wished to keep the 
recipe simplified.

Hauviette’s Fine Cakes Recipe
3 cups roasted, sifted  flour (roast 45 minutes in a 350 degree oven)
1 cup sweet butter (1/2 lb)
2 cups granulated sugar
2 egg yolks
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground  mace

Cream butter and sugar. Add spices and egg yolks, blend. Add flour 1/2 cup at 
a time. 
Scoop dough in a 1 tsp size spoon and pop out onto parchment paper. Using  a 
small glass or rolling pin, press the balls of dough into a small cookie.
Bake at 350 degrees 15 minutes.
Makes about 80

Bear’s Recipe 
2  cups of pastry flour roasted in a covered casserole and sifted fine . 
1/2 cup butter at room temperature into which is creamed 1 cup sugar mixed 
with 1/2 teaspoon each of cloves and mace (did not use saffron, having none 
on hand.) Add 1 egg yolk to thecreamed mixture and blended it in. 
Stir in 1 1/2 cups offlour 1/2 cup at a time.
Roll the dough into balls about 1 1/2 inch in diameter and flatten them onto 
an ungreased baking sheet
into a 2 1/2 inch diameter circle about 1/2 inch high.  I baked them at
350 degrees F for about 25 minutes.  This recipe made 9 cakes.
The results were approximately 6 inch diameter spiced sugar cookies with
a texture similar to a Sandy.
The cakes were slightly overcooked.  I'll bake them for 20 minutes nextbatch.

Lord Bogdan de la Brasov’s Recipe for Fine Cakes

Bake about 3 cups of flour. 
Sift it and use Bears spice ratio (2cups spice mixture to one cup Clotted 
Cream.  The clotted cream can be as thick as butter, especially if you cool 
it after removing it from the rest of the cream)
Cook these for about 12 minutes (at 350), laid out on parchment
Makes 60/batch.

Dame Aoife’s Clotted Cream Recipe
You need either 1 1/2 quarts of Day old from-the-Jersey-Cow (ie: high
cream content) Milk in a sauce pan, or you need a pint of heavy cream and
a quart of whole milk, mixed together briefly in a sauce pan (this works
btter if they are not perfectly fresh). Heat at the lowest possible burner
setting, NEVER letting it boil or even simmer. You may wish to turn it off
and on if your lowest heat is too high. It will develop a wrinkled, yellow
skin on top.  This could take a hour or more. The skin is good. Leave the
skin alone and heat without stirring. When the skin is pronouncedly
wrinkled and thick, remove the cream/milk from the burner. Let cool
several hours or overnight, very loosely covered if at all. With a spoon,
carefully remove the cream from the surface of the milk, and drain if
needed. The lumps of cream are called clotted cream. If you manage to get
the skin off in one piece, you have cabbage cream (it resembles a wrinkled
cabbage leaf). Yield: a scant pint of clotted cream, and a quart of milk
suitable for cooking purposes.