Fine Cakes, ie Shortbread, from 1585

The following is the research I compiled for the May '11 meeting of the Mooneschadowe Cooks' Guild. I've updated it slightly from the handout I had at the Guild meeting. These changes are primarily notes from the second batch I made.

Fine Cakes

From the Florilegeum

Redaction 

• 2 c Flour (pastry is ideal, but all-purpose works just fine)
• ½ c Clotted cream  [directions at the end of this document] or butter
• 1 c Sugar
• ½ tsp Mace, ground
• ½ tsp Saffron
• ½ tsp Cloves, ground

1. Place flour in a casserole dish and seal tightly. Bake as long as you’d bake a venison pastry (about an hour).
2. When the flour is baked, it’ll be lumpy. Run the lumps through a sieve and sieve it well (about three times through). Set aside.
3. Mix together sugar and spices. Measure out your cream. For ½ cup cream, one yolk should be adequate. Blend the egg and cream into the sugar.
4. Add flour ½ cup at a time. Blend well between additions. Add only enough flour that the dough doesn’t slump after a few minutes – about 2 cups total.
5. Roll the dough into little balls, place on Parchment paper, and flatten to ½ to ¼ inch. (I used my big cookie sheet to transport them to/from the oven.)
6. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes. (They were just turning golden along the edge.)

Baking Notes:
I made a batch in time for Castellan, and they very reminiscent of snickerdoodles with a big saffron aftertaste. During prep for this second batch, I accidentally let the cream boil for two hours. I wasn't sure if that would ruin the cream, but it didn't seem to make much of a difference.

I made one batch with the cream and one with margerine (Country Crock) for comparison. I guessed on the spice ratio, and I think I got it just right.

These cookies taste like they have a leavener (they don't) and nutmeg (ditto).

The remainder of the milk after making Clotted Cream (as below) is evaporated milk that can be used in any evaporated milk application (including 1:1 replacements of milk in recipes).

Source Notes
From Cindy Renfrow/Sincgiefu 
Author and Publisher of "Take a Thousand Eggs or More" and "A Sip Through Time"

"A searce is a sieve.  The pre-baked flour will be very hard and lumpy; you will need to rub it through a sieve in order to use it.  Clouted creame is fresh unpasteurized cream that has been allowed to sit in an earthenware pan near the hearth overnight.  The cream forms a thick wrinkled yellow crust called clouted or clotted cream.  If you don't have clouted cream, use butter."


Original Recipes

To make Fine Cakes.
From The Widowes Treasure, John Partridge, 1585

Take a quantity of fine wheate Flower, and put it in an earthen pot.  Stop it close and set it in an Oven, and bake it as long as you would a Pasty of Venison, and when it is baked it will be full of clods.  Then searce your flower through a fine sercer.  Then take clouted Creame or sweet butter, but Creame is best: then take sugar, cloves, Mace, saffron and yolks of eggs, so much as wil seeme to season your flower.  Then  put these things into the Creame, temper all together.  Then put thereto your flower.  So make your cakes.  The paste will be very short; therefore make them very little.  Lay paper under them.


To Make Short Cakes.
From The good Hus-wifes Handmaide for the Kitchen, Thomas Dawson, London 1594

Take wheate flower, of the fayrest ye can get, and put it in an earthern pot, and stop it close, and set it in an Oven and bake it, and when it is baken, it will be full of clods, and therefore ye must searse it through a searce: the flower will have as long baking as a pastie of Venison. When you have done this, take clowted Creame, or els sweet Butter, but Creame is better, then take Sugar, Cloves, Mace, and Saffron, and the yolke of an Egge for one doozen of Cakes one yolke is ynough: then put all these foresaid things together into the cream, + te{m}per the{m} al together, the{n} put the{m} to your flower and so make your Cakes, your paste wil be very short, therefore yee must make your Cakes very litle: when yee bake your cakes, yee must bake them upon papers, after the drawing of a batch of bread.


Clotted Cream
From Aiofe

You need either 1 1/2 quarts of Day old from-the-Jersey-Cow (ie: high cream content) Milk in a sauce pan, or you need a pint of heavy cream and a quart of whole milk, mixed together briefly in a sauce pan (this works btter if they are not perfectly fresh). Heat at the lowest possible burner setting, NEVER letting it boil or even simmer. You may wish to turn it off and on if your lowest heat is too high. It will develop a wrinkled, yellow skin on top.  This could take a hour or more. The skin is good. Leave the skin alone and heat without stirring. When the skin is pronouncedly wrinkled and thick, remove the cream/milk from the burner. Let cool several hours or overnight, very loosely covered if at all. With a spoon, carefully remove the cream from the surface of the milk, and drain if needed. The lumps of cream are called clotted cream. If you manage to get the skin off in one piece, you have cabbage cream (it resembles a wrinkled cabbage leaf). Yield: a scant pint of clotted cream, and a quart of milk suitable for cooking purposes.