SC - Aack--can't find a recipe I saved...help, please

[Philip & Susan Troy]

As this post is long I will give you the layout.  First is the period
recipe, followed by some comments from Bear from when we were working this
recipe out.  I will follow that at the end with my comments. Last is a
post from Aoife on how to make clotted cream.

>To make fine cakes  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.  (John Partridge
>[The widowes Treasure] in Lorna J. Sass's "To the Queen's Taste)


Sass's adaption may make a perfectly fine short bread, but it really
doesn't match what the recipe says.

First, the flour is baked.  This should coagulate the gluten, so that
when the flour is sifted, it will become granular and remain roughly
granular in any dough into which it is mixed.

Second, the spices are mixed into the sugar combined with egg yolks and
creamed into the butter or clotted cream.  A modern version would
probably use 2 cups of the spiced sugar to 1 cup of butter and a couple
of egg yolks.  I've never worked with clotted cream, but I suspect it is
more liquid than butter and will use more dry ingredients and blend the
flavors better.

Third, the flour is then added to the creamed mixture to form a paste.
For the modern version I postulated, this would be approximately 2 cups,
depending on the quality and dryness of the flour.  The flour is added
primarily to thicken the dough and reduce the surface butter fat.
Personally, I would work in flour enough to make a ball of dough that
doesn't slump and leave it at that.

Fourth, the recipe says nothing about glazing the cakes, but I would
consider that a matter of choice.

Fifth, the recipe says nothing about baking these, but I would.
Probably 350 degrees F for about 30 minutes or until golden brown.  I
would expect the result to be a somewhat crumbly spice cookie.

I'd also do like the recipe states and make separate little cakes and
lay them out on a baking sheet.  There should be enough fat in the dough
so you don't have to grease it.  Thinking about it, they may have been
baked on the paper rather than served on the paper, it would keep the
bottom of the small cake from being soiled and it would prevent the
dough from adhering to the oven.  I may experiment with this if I ever
get a wood fired oven built.
To make the cakes, make a ball of dough about 1 to 1 1/2 inches in
diameter, then press it out into a rough circle of the desired
thickness, which I would guess to be between 1/2 and 1/4 inch.  This
should produce a final product fairly close to that described in the
recipe.
I'd also keep an eye on these while they bake.  I expect about a 30
minute baking time, but until that is tested, the range could be as
little as 15 minutes to as much as 50 minutes.

You might make sure you have a little extra roasted flour on hand.  I
whipped up a batch of brownies last night for a niece's birthday to
roughly the same proportions as your fine cakes recipe and the dough was
a little more liquid than you would like.  With the clotted cream, I'd
have about 3 cups of roasted flour available to each cup of clotted
cream and work the dough to the appropriate texture by feel.  I'd stir
in a cup of flour to start, then work in additional  flour 1/4 cup at a
time until the dough forms a ball that doesn't slump after a couple
minutes.
If the dough you make with the clotted cream doesn't come away from your
hands easily and leave them feeling greasy, you might want to spray a
little PAM on your baking sheets.

I've run a small batch to test my ideas about the fine cakes recipe.  I
roasted five cups of pastry flour in a covered casserole and sifted it
fine .  I then took  1/2 cup butter at room temperature into which I
creamed 1 cup sugar mixed with 1/2 teaspoon each of cloves and mace.  I
did not use saffron, having none on hand.  I added 1 egg yolk to the
creamed mixture and blended it in.  I then stirred in 1 1/2 cups of
flour 1/2 cup at a time.
The dough was very soft and granular.  I rolled it into balls about 1
1/2 inch in diameter and flattened 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 spicing was adequate.  Fresher spices would have improved the bite.
The cakes were slightly overcooked.  I'll bake them for 20 minutes next
batch.

Bear
- -----
So, having made these a bunch (its one of my favorites, especially to take
to pennsic) I bake about 3 cups of flour.  Gluten issues aside, this give
the flour a lovely nutty flavor.  Sift it and use Bears sprice ratio (2
cups spice mixture to one cup Clotted Cream.  The clotted cream can be as
this as butter, especially if you cool it after removing it from the rest
of the cream.  It makes a MUCH better cookie IMHO.  Then again, thats what
the original told us.  I usually cook these for about 12 minutes and I lay
them out on parchment.  Too much more than that (at 350) and they start to
burn.  They are absolutely lovely.  If you roll the dough thin enough they
will have a bit of a crumbly texture and they are not as good if they are
thick.  Definitely cook them on parchment.  It works GREAT!
As Cindy mentioned, I also get about 60/batch.  You need that many
so that you can get the 10-20 or so past your family and to your event!
<g>  Below is a recipe to make clotted cream and works from pasteurized
milk as well as non.  Enjoy!

Cu drag, Bogdan de la Brasov
- ---

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.

HTH
Aoife



_______________________________________________________________________________
Jeffrey Heilveil M.S.		      Ld. Bogdan de la Brasov, C.W.
Department of Entomology	A Bear's paw and base vert on field argent
University of Illinois		    	  
heilveil at uiuc.edu			     
office: (217) 244-5115
home: (217) 355-5702		       
ICQ: 34699710 	             

A .sig file by any other name is still but a diversion from work.
_______________________________________________________________________________