[Sca-cooks] Digby's Small Cakes

[AEllin Olafs dotter]

By "where to start" I meant I knew to start in the Florilegium... I
never thought of the desserts file! Having its own file may make a lot
of sense, as the posts seem kind of scattered, now.

People seemed to like them... commented favorably on number of currants
and texture. Looking back on it, I think that's what the warming did -
brought the dough together enough to support the huge amount of
currants. (Remember, this is a pound. A box is only 12 oz.)  When I 
first mixed them into the flour-sugar mixture, my
reaction was that this would never hold together, too much fruit - but,
lo and behold, it did.

Oh, I did make my first two baking sheets a handsbreadth in size, but
made the rest smaller, because of the nature of the event. (These were
for munchies during breaks from dancing.) Both seemed to work equally
well. I patted them all down thin. And, as I said, I didn't notice the
pricking doing very much...

I did try the sprinkle sugar and put them back in the oven method of
icing. It kind of worked... if I do that again, I'll do it while baking
- whisk them out just before they are done, sugar, and then finish. This
didn't quite melt the sugar (though a fair bit stuck) and over browned
them... not quite burnt, but closer than I'd have quite liked.

I would also be very interested in what Cariadoc has to say. I kept
asking questions because I kept expecting someone to point out the
obvious reason  I was missing as to why it wouldn't work... I still have
that nagging feeling. However, they did indeed work, and were good (OK,
I won't claim excellence, I'll leave that to Digby *G*.)

Thank you to everyone who commented, and especially to Adamantius, who
answered my questions and encouraged my lunacy.

Next time - yes, there will be one...
I'll find the scale and we'll see if that changes
measurements/proportions/results.
I'll use the sherry.
I'll ice them differently.

AEllin



Stefan li Rous wrote:
> AEllin replied to me with:
> 
>> I saw that article - that's where I started. I was originally looking
>> for the actual recipe, as I don't have a copy but had heard of it. I
>> know where to start, Stefan... *G* I guess I revisited the
>> revisitation...
> 
> Yes, I saw this after I'd replied to you. For various reasons sometimes 
> very similar material can end up in several Florilegium files. 
> Especially when people find the files using a search engine they are 
> unaware of the other files. Sometimes my idea of where something should 
> be filed is different from other folks, so sometimes I like to mention 
> these other files just so folks have everything available.
> 
> It may be revisitation, but despite the number of times I've seen this 
> recipe come up previously, this is the first time I've seen the points 
> you made come up. Which is why I'm especially interested in seeing what 
> Master Cariadoc says. Since the  original redactions and much of the 
> publicity for this recipe originated with him.
> 
>> Other than the article, I was looking in the cookies file. It was
>> discussed several times there. And I did see Adamantius's suggestion
>> there for the icing - may try that.
> 
> And the cookies file was one I considered there might be info in, but 
> stopped looking when I saw the number of messages on these cakes in the 
> desserts-msg file. Oh well. I will be making this material more visible 
> (hopefully) by moving the stuff from these several files and the recent 
> discussion here, into a Digby-Cakes-msg file.
> 
> Stefan
> --------
>