[Sca-cooks] Seeking Simple Spiced Cakes

[Adele de Maisieres]

Johnna Holloway wrote:

>Not sure that it is possible. A lot of the in period "cakes"
>are yeast risen cakes with spices that resemble spiced breads.
>You also get fine cakes or small cakes.
>There's a pound cake recipe (actually it calls for 2 pounds each of
>butter, flour, sugar, plus eggs, rosewater, and 2 pounds of currants)
>in Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery. The manuscripts that
>make up the book are dated as Tudor-Jacobean or roughly 1580-1625
>by the editor Karen Hess. These are baked in buttered pans, but the size
>is not stated.
>
I think I've made this accidentally, because a perioid cake was needed 
at an event on short notice and the ingredients on hand for a spiced and 
currant-filled pound cake were available. 

A one-pound cake fills a bundt pan, so I'm guessing a two pound cake 
with two pounds of currants would do two deep tube pans or four loaves. 
Mmmm... pound cake.  It helps if you have a heavy-duty electric mixer if 
you want to do this in any quantity bugger than the one-pound version, 
by the way.

-- 
Adele de Maisieres

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Habeo metrum - musicamque,
hominem meam. Expectat alium quid?
-Georgeus Gershwinus
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