The Receipt: Champagne is customary for Valentine's Day. So, I made champagne biscuits and champagne water ices from The Italian confectioner; or, Complete economy of desserts. I tried two receipts, because I was expecting catastrophic failure on at least one, and wanted a back up. [The biscuits don't contain actual champagne, as in the beverage. The ices, however...]
The Date/Year and Region: British (published in London, but ostensibly Italian), 1827
How Did You Make It:
For the biscuits, I attempted a quarter-scale of the receipt: 6 oz powdered sugar, 8 oz flour, 4 eggs, 4 oz butter, and ~.5 oz caraway seeds. It was fairly easy to make up--I beat the eggs thoroughly in the powdered sugar, added the butter (melted), and then stirred in the flour and caraway seeds. I ended up with a light batter, which I baked in modern cupcake molds, as I miscalculated having the papers I needed to bake the biscuits.
I baked them at 400F for 9 minutes. The resulting biscuits are light, and resemble a cake in texture. The quarter-batch made 22 biscuits (cupcake-sized, but about 1/3-1/2 the height of a full cupcake).
For the ices, I made a half-batch, with 3 lemons, 1/4 cup sugar, and half a bottle champagne. Not having lump sugar, I rubbed the lemons through granulated sugar (it was not particularly effective, but the sugar did take on some lemon-flavor, in addition to getting everywhere). I then juiced the lemons, mixed the juice with the champagne and sugar, and froze using the 'I don't have proper ice-cream-freezer' method (ie, put the bowl in the freezer, and stir it every 20 minutes until it solidifies). When the mixture was almost solid, I put it into all the small molds I have and let it set over-night.
Time to Complete: Mixing and baking the biscuits took about 40 minutes, with baking two batches of biscuits. The ices I mixed up about 15 minutes, with four hours of intermittent stirring to set and then freezing overnight.
Total Cost: $1.50 for the lemons, and $8 champagne. All of other ingredients were on hand.
How Successful Was It? I think they both turned out nice. The caraway still isn't my favorite flavor, but I liked the biscuits just the same. They have a nice, light texture, and make a good alternative to all the heavy cookie-like biscuits I usually make. They do, however, get hard fairly quickly, and need to be baked shortly before serving (or sealed in an airtight container promptly).
The ices mostly taste like champagne. Think 'champagne margarita'. I don't always notice the lemon, but when I do, it imparts a noticeably sour taste. Still, they molded nicer than any other ices I've made, and I didn't catch anything on fire this time. I will make these again, using a little more sugar to counter the tart lemon, and hopefully with a proper freezer, which should clear up the slight graininess in the texture.
How Accurate Is It? The biscuits were made in modern silicon cupcake cups instead of tins with paper, and the ices didn't have a proper freezer (or lump sugar), but I think I stayed pretty true tot he original receipts.
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| Champagne biscuits. |
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| Champagne ices. |
I was most excited to use the 2-piece rose mold Elise gave me. It turned out very nicely, with the ice coming out of both sides easily, and staying together as a single rose. The picture doesn't do it justice.
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| Rose and mold. All the little details came through in the ice, even if my camera doesn't like them. |
Like the rose. ;)
ReplyDeleteIt was easy to use, and came out nice. :)
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