6 oz Butter (1 1/2 sticks) — at 1/2 ts Cloves
Room temperature 1/8 ts Mace
1/2 c Sugar pn Ground saffron
1 Egg yolk — beaten Egg white
1 3/4 c Sifted flour
To make fine Cakes–Take a quantity of fine wheate Flower, and put it
in an earthen pot. Stop it close and set it in an Oven, and bake it
as long as you would a Pasty of Venison, and when it is baked it will
be full of clods. Then searce your flower through a fine sercer.
Then take clouted Creame or sweet butter, but Creame is best: then
take sugar, cloves, Mace, saffron and yolks of eggs, so much as wil
seeme to season your flower. Then put these things into the Creame,
temper all together. Then put thereto your flower. So make your
cakes. The paste will be very short; therefore make them very
little. Lay paper under them. –John Partridge, The Widowes Treasure
In the sixteenth century, if your cake was “dough on both sides,”
your project had certainly failed, for the most delectable cake was a
crisp and crumbly, spicy shortbread like this one.
1. In a bowl, cream butter. Add sugar and beat until fluffy. 2. Add
egg yolk and beat until thoroughly blended. 3. In another bowl,
combine sifted flour and spices, stirring to distribute evenly. 4.
Sift dry ingredients into bowl containing butter-and-sugar mixture.
Combine by stirring or with hands. 5. Press mixture into a 9-inch
square baking pan. 6. Brush top lightly with egg white. 7. Bake at
325F for 45 minutes or until cake feels firm when pressed lightly in
the center. 8. Cut into squares while cake is still hot. 9. Cool in
pan on wire rack.
Yield: 25 small “cakes”
To The Queen’s Taste by Lorna J. Sass “Desserts” ISBN–0-87099-151-5
Yields
25 servings