[Sca-cooks] Digby's Small Cakes

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach AEllin Olafs dotter:
>I need to bring something snacky/desserty to an event with a Late 
>Elizabethan theme, and looked at these. (OK, they're slightly later 
>- they'll deal...) I looked up the recipe in the Florithingy 
>(thanks, Stefan) and glanced through the several redactions there. 
>And noticed something that intrigued me.
>
>In the original, you mix your ingredients, and then > 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
>
>and then go on to form your cakes. All the redactions seem to 
>blithely skip over this step. (I was skimming - it's possible I 
>missed one.) Anyone know why, other than the fact that it makes no 
>sense to our modern bakers eye, well trained to chill dough? has 
>anyone tried it, and found a problem?  Has anyone tried it, period? 
>Does it get soggy, or does this make it possible to make the cakes 
>thin, as directed? Or both?
>
>It's in the high 80s, here, I'm not going to need any fire to warm 
>my paste... which makes this rather attractive for summer baking... 
>*G*

Looking at the recipe, I'm guessing it allows the cakes to be rolled 
fairly thin, and to make the aromatics (nutmeg, etc.) more aromatic 
(not that baking won't do the same). But between the specific 
instruction to make them thin (most SCA cooks seem almost to make a 
drop-cookie), the warning to bake them in a hot, _open_, oven, and 
the instruction to prick them full of holes, all seem to suggest 
these are more like biscotti in texture. It may also  be that they're 
intended to be chemically rather than structurally shortened by all 
that butter and cream. IOW, made tender without the flakiness and air 
bubbling associated with buttery pastry.

We normally chill pastry to make it easier to work and to speed up 
the relaxation of gluten, but when things are rolled out thin, they 
don't necessarily become tough, especially with that amount of fat.

Adamantius