HFF 3.17: Harvest

The Challenge: Harvest. Make a food associated with harvest-time, try another way of preserving food, or make something seasonable for late summer.

The Recipe: Mint cakes from French Confectionery Adapted for English Families

MINT CAKES--Take some fresh leaves and chop them coarsel,y and put them in a saucepan with a cover, let it boil half an hour then squeeze it through a cloth, but not too hard; with this decoction moisten two pounds of flour, three quarters of a pound of sugar, a pound of fresh butter, and a little yeast; cut or rasp some candied citron, and add the yolks of four eggs; let it rise an hour in a warm place, then make the paste into cakes. They will be lighter without the butter. I think the flavour of mint is not generally liked; but give the receipt as a novelty for those who like variety in flavour. The cakes are very good for those who like the flavour of mint.

I chose this receipt because: 1) the mint plants in my garden are doing very, very well this year, and 2) the bolded bit about people not liking mint caught my eye.

The Date/Year and Region: London, 1853

How Did You Make It: I picked a generous handful of mint leaves, and boiled them for 30 minutes is about 2.5-3 cups of water. Working on a quarter scale, I mixed together 3 oz of granulated sugar, 8 oz of all-purpose flour, 1 tsp of dry yeast, 4 oz softened butter, and 1 egg. [The yeast quantity is a estimate based on the amount of flour and sugar used.]  I strained the mint water, and added ~1.5 cups of it to the flour mixture, forming a sticky dough, rather thicker than a batter.  I let this rise for 1 hour (in the oven on the 100F "bread proof" setting); I dropped the dough onto a paper-covered cookie sheet, forming cakes about half the size of my palm, and baked them for ~10 minutes at 350F. To the second pan, I added pieces of candied lemon peel, as I had no candied citron.

Time to Complete: Just under 2 hours, including rise time.

Total Cost: All ingredients on hand. Especially the mint.

How Successful Was It?: Unexpectedly pleasant. They're not quite sweet or savory, and the texture is somewhat between a cake and a soft roll, but it still somehow worked. I didn't notice the mint particularly in either variety. The cakes which had peel tasted just fine.

How Accurate Is It?: A lot of speculation went into this (amount of yeast, amount of liquid, amount of mint boiled in said liquid...). I also used active dry yeast instead of a period variety. The most noteworthy change was probably the lack of candied citron. 

Mint Cakes. Some with candied peel, some without.