[Sca-cooks] Helpful Hint From Horatius...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Sue Clemenger:
>How about sharing the recipe for the wafers, you spoon tease??! <g>
>--maire, getting ready to go out for dinner....probably lamb....yummmmmm...

I have this locally too, but I just got it from the Florilegium...

>  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

I made a half-batch today, using three egg yolks, 1 1/2 cups flour, 
one cup of cream, a pinch of salt, 3/4 cup sugar and about a half 
teaspoon cinnamon (yes, the sugar and cinnamon were increased from 
the original adapted recipe). The extra sugar made them a little bore 
brittle and crisp...

Served with a key lime mousse I threw together from stuff in the 
fridge and my standard mousse formula -- I'd have to reconstruct a 
recipe from what I did, if such a thing were needful.

Awright, gotta go set up Santa's plate of Shanghai spring rolls and 
India Pale Ale (don'tcha think he gets tired of milk and cookies in 
every house?)

Adamantius, also, by sheer coincidence, fond of both Shanghai spring 
rolls and India Pale Ale
-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
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Holt, 07/29/04