HFF 4.21: Let Them Eat Cake

The Challenge: Let Them Eat Cake! Make a cake. Or cakes.

The Recipe: Bermuda Witches from Cassell's Dictionary of Cooking. I had trouble deciding whether these should be for the name challenge, the cake challenge, or the "fear" challenge. They're quite versatile.

First, the cake:

Savoy Cake--Weigh seven large fresh eggs, and take their weight in dried flour, and a little more than half their weight in sifted sugar. Break the eggs, and separate the yolks from the whites. Beat the former in a bowl, and add the sugar to them very gradually, together with a little grated lemon-rind, a spoonful of orange-flower or rose-water, or any other suitable flavouring. Add the flour a little at a time, and continue to beat the mixture for twenty minutes. Butter a mould, sprinkle powdered sugar upon the butter, and shake off all that will not adhere. Tie a strip of buttered paper round the top of the mould to keep the preparation from rolling down the sides whilst it is being baked. Pour in the cake, and three-parts fill the mould with it. When done, let it stand a few minutes then shake it well to loosen it and turn it out carefully. This cake is very good cut into slices and made into jam sandwiches. Time to bake an hour and a quarter or a little more.

And then the witches:

Bermuda Witches--Spread strawberry, raspberry, apple jelly, or preserve of any kind without stones, over slices of Savoy or rice cake, which must be cut exceedingly thin and even. Spread unsparingly over the preserve finely grated cocoa nut; cover over with a similar slice of cake, and after pressing all together cut them into any form desired. The square form is generally thought most suitable, and each slice of cake may be divided into the size desired before the preserve is put on, but they will always require some trimming. Send them to table arranged prettily on a napkin, and garnished with myrtle sprigs.

Since these are literally Victorian Sandwiches with coconut, I'm assuming the "witch" comes from "-wich"; and Wikipedia tells me that Bermuda is the furthest north coconuts grow in the wild.

The Date/Year and Region: 1883, London

How Did You Make It:  I made a half-scale, using three eggs, with 6 oz of all-purpose flour and a generous 3 ounces of granulated sugar. Per the instructions, I separated the eggs and beat the yolks with sugar, adding in half a lemon peel (minced fine), 1/2 Tablespoon orange-flower water, and the flour. I beat all the egg whites to stiff peaks, then folded them into the batter.

I baked the cake in a loaf-pan (buttered and sugared), for ~35 minutes at 350F.

Once cool, I cut the cake into slices, trimmed the tops, spread cherry preserves over half the slices, sprinkled with coconut, and set the plain slices of cake on top. I did not trim the sandwiches further, because every time I try something like that, it makes a mess.

Time to Complete: About an hour and a quarter on the cake; 10 minutes on the sandwiches, excluding cooling time.

Total Cost: $5 covered the lemon, eggs, and fancy jam (on sale), with flour, sugar and orange-flower water in the pantry.

How Successful Was It?: Tasty. The coconut isn't just nice, it materially improves the whole 'Victoria Sandwich' experience. This is definitely a 'whole greater than sum of parts' situation, in that the cake by itself is sort of...weird. I ate the odd piece plain, and it just had an odd crumb. Not rubbery, but that is the word that comes to mind (also 'a touch dense', and 'not unlike a sponge'). Once the preserves and coconut were on it, though, it was quite nice. I don't think I'd use this savoy cake for anything else, except maybe a trifle or similar where it's absorbing things. The orange-flower water and lemon peel flavor were perfectly balanced to eachother and the cake (not too faint or strong). The coconut and cherry worked really nicely together and with the citrus; I really want to try it with raspberry as well.

I will definitely keep this variant in the rotation, since it's tasty, straight-forward, and looks nice.

How Accurate Is It?: I'm fairly sure (checked a few other savoy cake recipes, period and modern), that this recipe omitted a step: to beat the egg whites into stiff peaks and fold them in to the batter. Otherwise the cake has nothing to make it rise. So I did that. Per some modern hints, I made sure to beat the yokes and sugar until the mixture started looking white and almost fluffy. By time the flour was in, it was almost a crumbly dough, so I felt pretty good about the egg whites, as they took it back to being a batter.

Acknowledging that change, I'm feeling pretty good about these. I used store-bought preserves and garnished with lemon balm instead of myrtle, but the cake being scaled to the egg weight makes me feel pretty good about the sugar and flour amounts versus the egg size, and the taste of the cake vindicates the "spoonful = Tablespoon" hypothesis I was working on for the orange-flower water. I did use sweetened shredded coconut, so these might be a bit sweeter than originally intended.  

Bermuda Witches!