HFF 4.4: Hearty Fare

The Challenge: Hearty Fare. I opted for "heart"-y rather than "hearty" because puns make me happy.

The Recipe: Heart cakes from The Lady's Assistant for Regulating and Supplying her Table. 

The Date/Year and Region: London, 1777 (3rd ed.)

How Did You Make It: There wasn't much detail for how to mix the ingredients (beyond creaming the butter and beating the eggs), so I decided to just add things in the listed order (instead of say, separating the eggs and beating the whites fluffy, as I might for a cake). So, I beat 1lb butter to a cream, then stirred in beaten eggs (12 yolks 6 whites), and followed that up with 1lb sugar, 1 lb flour, then 1 lb currants, and 4 Tbsp brandy. This made a thick batter, not quite a dough. I spooned it into buttered muffin tins, placing pieces of candied lemon and orange peel in the center (totaling 2oz candied peel). Baked at 350F.  

Time to Complete: The batter mixed up in 10 minutes; each pan baked for ~17 minutes.

Total Cost: Currants were $4 for the pound, butter on sale for $2/pound, all other ingredients on hand.

How Successful Was It?: Tasty. The cakes seemed a little bland at first, but they go very well with tea, and I actually don't want them any sweeter. They aged well over several days without going stale. My mom thought they were muffins, and didn't observe anything unusual about them. I wouldn't call them either dense or dry, but I found the texture slightly more substantial than a modern muffin or cake.  

How Accurate Is It?: Electric oven and mixer, as usual. Likewise, zante currants instead of real ones, because that's what I can get in this area. The original called for candied orange and citron, though I didn't consider until afterward that they might have meant fruit pieces instead of peel (my orange and lemon peel are always mixed, thus my inclusion of lemon). I think the cupcake tins were a good approximation of size, since I know I overfilled the first pan, but still ended up with 31 cakes where the recipe indicated 36.

My best guess for the 'heart' name is that it's the candied fruit at the center.

Heart cakes