[Sca-cooks] excellent small cakes

[Mem Morman]

This is the recipe that I use for Excellent Small Cakes.  It was
redacted long, long ago by Mistress Johanna von Griffenhurst (the 13th
Laurel...).  When I bring these to events, people's usual reaction is
"OOHHHH!  Chocolate chip cookies!"  and then they take a bite...

Excellent Small Cakes

2 sticks unsalted butter
1 1/8 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
6 tablespoons whipping cream
2 tablespoons dry sherry
2 cups unbleached flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
5 ounces of currants

Mix all ingredients well into a stiff dough and cook 12-15 minutes in a
325 degree oven until slightly brown on the bottom.

The original recipe is from Sir Kenelme Digbie's The Closet Opened
printed in 1669 by Digbie's nephew and including his uncle's store of
recipes used at the court of James I.

Excellent Small Cakes

Take three pound of very find flower well dryed by the fire, and put to
it a pound and a half of loaf Sugar sifted in a very fine sieve and
dryed;  Three pounds of Currnats well washed and dryed in a cloth and
set by the fire;  When you flower 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 new-laid 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, til it be through warm.  Then make then up in
little cakes, and prick them full of holes; you muct bake them in a
wuick oven unclosed.  Afterwards Ice them over with Sugar.  The Cakes
should be about the bigness of a hand-breadth and thin:  of the cise of
the Sugar Cakes sold at Barnet.