Excellent Small Cakes

Excellent Small Cakes is a traditional Elizabethan recipe for individual cakes with a Madeira icing (frosting). The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Elizabethan version of Excellent Small Cakes.

prep time

20 minutes

cook time

20 minutes

Total Time:

40 minutes

Makes:

Rating:

Tags : Baking Recipes Cake Recipes British Recipes

Original Recipe

Excellent Small Cakes (from Kenelm Digby The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight)

Take three pound of very fine flower well dried by the fire, and put to it a pound and a half of loaf sugar sifted in a very fine sieve and dried; 3 pounds of currants well washed, and dried in a cloth and set by the fire; when your flour 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 newlaid 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, till it be through warm. Then make them up in little cakes, and prick them full of holes; you must bake them in a quick oven unclosed. Afterwards ice them over with sugar. The cakes should be about the bigness of a hand breadth and thin; of the size of the sugar cakes sold at Barnet.

Modern Redaction

Ingredients:

600g flour
170g sugar
350g currants
170g butter
2½ tbsp cream
yolk of 1 egg
¼ tsp freshly-ground nutmeg
2 tbsp sack [Madeira] (substitute sherry with 1 tsp of honey)

Method:

Cream the butter, sugar and the egg yolk together then add the flour to this and mix until well combined. Add the cream, currants nutmeg and sack and fold in properly. Place casings in a half-dozen well butterfly cake tin and spoon the mixture into these (you will probably need two trays). Place the tray in an oven pre-heated 180°C (350°F/Gas Mark 4) for about 20 minutes.

Whilst the cakes are baking make an icing by adding as much sack to 75g of sugar as is needed to make it just spreadable. As soon as the cakes comes out of the oven, cover them with the icing and allow to cool before tipping out.

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