HFF 3.1: Twelfth Night Cake

The Challenge: New Year's A new year, a new era, a new receipt, or a food intended for New Year's.

For the "new year" challenge, I tried a new receipt that seasonal in early January: Twelfth (Night) Cake.  For added fun, I baked in my new 8" tin cake ring (from Goosebay Workshops).

My usual receipt for Twelfth Cake is from 1888, and I tend to decorate it with marzipan and my modern almond-buttercream icing (since I encountered references to such cakes being iced and decorated in sugarplums or sweetmeats, but without explicit recipes).  While preparing for this task, however, I discovered some very helpful receipts in the The Complete Cook (1850): a specific icing for wedding or twelfth cakes, as well as an apple paste for decoration, and a couple versions of the cake itself.  However, I couldn't resist trying the 1857 cake receipt in Godey's--it's in rhyme!

The Receipt:  Twelfth Cake

TWELFTH CAKE
To two pounds of flour well sifted unite
 Of loaf sugar ounces sixteen.
Two pounds of fresh butter with eighteen fine eggs
And four pounds of currants washed clean
Eight ounces of almonds well blanched and cut small
The same weight of citron sliced
Of orange and lemon peel candied one pound
And a gill of pale brandy uniced
A large nutmeg grated exact half an ounce
Of allspice but only a quarter
Of mace coriander and ginger well ground
Or pounded to dust in a mortar
An important addition is cinnamon which
Is better increased than diminished
The fourth of an ounce is sufficient
Now this
May be baked four good hours till finished.

The Date/Year and Region: 1857, American (Philadelphia)

How Did You Make it: I made this receipt on a quarter-scale. First, there was candied lemon and orange peel to make (in the usual method of boiling in sugar syrup). I then beat 4.5 eggs (four eggs and the white of a fifth) very hard, and mixed into it 1/2 lb of softened butter, 1/4 lb sugar, and 1/2 lb all-purpose flour.  I then stirred in 10 oz of currants (should have been 16 oz), 2 oz of silvered, blanched almonds, 4 oz of candied peel (minced), 1 fl oz brandy, about a quarter of a nutmeg (freshly grated), 1.5 tsp ground allspice, 3/4 tsp each of mace, coriander, ginger, and cinnamon.  I omitted the 2 oz citron, as I did not have any.

Having learned from previous recipes that these cakes need to bake very slowly, I put a double layer of parchment paper around the inside of the cake ring, and on the cookie sheet under it, and over the batter. It was much easier that trying to line a pan in paper.  This cake baked in 2 hours at 325F. I added a white bean near the end of the bake, per tradition.

For the icing, I beat egg white and powered sugar for about ~20 minutes, until the icing thickened and would hang on  the side of a spoon without dripping.  I actually managed to forget the lemon juice; this didn't affect the consistency of the cake when first cut, but on the day after, the icing broke/scaled when cut, just as the book warned.

Running out of time to make the apple paste (which I simply have to try next year), I used commercial marzipan and modern food coloring to decorate the cake. I'm still not good at shaping marzipan, so after the usual attempt at a crown, I just made medallions with a cookie stamp.

[I used the approximation of 4 Tbsp= 1 oz on the spices, since I didn't have a scale that could handle weighing out 1/8 and 1/16 oz quantities.  For the brandy, 1 gill = half a cup or 4 fl oz.]

Time to Complete: About half an hour to prepare the cake (after the peel was candied) and two hours to bake it. Decorating it was another 20-30 minutes of playing with the marzipan while letting the mixer beat the icing.

Total Cost: Most everything I already had on hand.

How Successful Was It? Fairly successful. This cake baked nicer than my previous ones, which tend to get overdone on the edges by time the center bakes (even with a few layers of paper). I think the proportions of raisins/currants/almonds/peel in my usual receipt is slightly richer, but the texture was really pleasant on this one. The new icing went on easily and looked well, but I like using my modern icing, because I think the extra almond flavor goes well with the cake.  I may try experimenting with some period almond icings next year, and hopefully that apple paste, too.

How Accurate Is It? As noted, I scaled down to a quarter-sized cake; I'm tempted to try a half-size in my current cake hoop, but I'll need a much larger party and pan to attempt a full-sized cake. Even with a dozen people, we only ate 3/4 of the cake that night (resulting in a second year with no monarch being crowned--no one found the bean). I omitted the citron, simply because I didn't have any, and used 'zante currants' for the currants, because that is what I can buy locally. We do have a native currant in this region, so one of these years I'd like to dry some of its fruit for my winter baking.

Boiling lemon and orange peel in sugar syrup.

New cake round! It was easy to paper, easy to remove the cake,
and only a tiny bit of the batter seeped under.

The baked cake.

Iced cake, decorated with a  yellow marzipan crown in the center,
and red, blue and green medallions around the sides.
The crown stood straighter before I cut the back half of the cake.