HFF 4.10: Sing For Your Supper

The Challenge: Sing for your supper! Make a dish associated with a song or with music.

The Recipe: Little Patty's Cakes from Domestic Management; Or, The Healthful Cookery-Book

[A bit of a stretch, since as far as I can tell the name is coincidental and has nothing to do with the rhyme.]

The Date/Year and Region: 1813 (2nd ed), London

How Did You Make It: On a quarter scale, since I have to mind how quickly I use eggs. I rubbed 2 oz of butter into 4 oz flour, added 2 oz sugar, 2 oz currants, 1/4 tsp ("a little") ground mace, then moistened the mixture into a sticky dough with 1 egg. The instructions say to lay small pieces in a buttered tin, which I'm interpreting as baking like a cookie (though whether drop or cut-out, I couldn't say; I went with drop this time). Baked 350F until the cakes just started browning; it was to be "half hour in a quick oven", but I was skeptical of anything so cookie-like taking that long on anything other than a very slow oven--and, more importantly, forgot to set the timer.

Time to Complete: About 10 minutes to mix up, uncertain baking time.

Total Cost: About $1 (everything on hand, estimating from usual butter/egg prices). 

How Successful Was It?: Very tasty. The texture and density is ultimately very similar to every other cookie-like sweet biscuit or small cake I've made from this period, but I think the currants and mace are my favorite flavor combination so far. For a change, I think I guessed right the first time on the spice amount--it's distinct and flavorful, but not at all excessive.

How Accurate Is It?: I mixed these cakes by hand (mostly being too lazy to haul out the mixer for such a small batch); as usual, zante currants substituted for the real currants. As already mentioned, it wasn't clear how the cakes should be shaped, though I think the drop method was perfectly serviceable, I could probably make them neater on a second try.

Not the prettiest, but very tasty.