Fine Cakes 2 - from the Good Huswife's Jewell

Here is an old recipe from "The Good Husewife's Jewell" published in 1596:

Take fine flowre and good Damaske water you must have no other liqueur but that, then take sweet butter, two or three yolkes of egges and a good quantity of Suger, and a few cloves, and mace, as your Cookes mouth shall serve him, and a lyttle saffron, and a little Gods good about a sponfull if you put in too much they shall arise, cutte them in squares lyke unto trenchers, and pricke them well, and let your oven be well swept and lay them uppon papers and so set them into the oven. Do not burne them if they be three or foure days old they bee the better.

My redaction:

• 2 cups flour
• 175g butter
• 3 egg yolks
• 1 cup sugar
• 1tsp saffron, ground
• ½ tsp cloves
• 2 tsp mace, ground
• 3 tablespoons rosewater
• 1 tsp baking powder

Mix dry ingredients, and rub in the butter to make something resembling fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolks and rosewater, and mix to make a dough. Wrap in plastic wrap and keep in the fridge for an hour or so to settle. Roll out to 5mm and cut out shapes. Bake for about 20 minutes at 175 degrees until lightly golden.

Fine Cakes - English spiced shortbread

This recipe is from "The Widowes Treasure" which was published in 1639. It is pretty much a spiced shortbread, but made, interestingly, with pre-baked flour. This gives them a really beautiful crisp texture.

The original version:
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 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.
My version:
1 cup plain flour
90 g butter
1 generous pinch of saffron
3 cloves
1/8 tsp mace
1/4 cup caster sugar
1 egg yolk

Bake flour for 15-20 minutes at 180 degrees, in a closed casserole dish. The flour shouldn't brown, but you will see that it clumps together if you stir it with a spoon.  Allow to cool, then sift.

Grind spices with sugar. Cream butter, sugar/spice and egg yolk till the consistency of thick cream. Fold in flour.  Do not knead the dough. 

I pressed small amounts of this mixture into molds to make flour shapes, which popped out of the mold easily.  One of my apprentices forms them in to small balls and then presses them flat. As the original recipe says, the paste is very short! Bake on baking trays lined with paper for 10-15 minutes at 180 degrees.

*Note: be careful with the mace - depending on the particular mace you have, it can be very strong!

Bizcochos - Renaissance Spanish Biscotti

This recipe is from a book by Diego Granado, "Libro del Arte de Cozina", 1599 trans. by Lady Brighid ni Chiarain

Take twelve eggs, and remove the whites from four of them, and with a little orange-flower water beat them a great deal, and grind a pound of sugar, and cast it in little by little, always beating quickly, and cast in flour, or powdered wheat starch, and beat it with force. Having cast in the said flour, when they see that it is necessary, and very fine, and the dough must remain white, just as for fritters, and then cast it in your pots, and carry them to the oven, and when half-cooked remove them, and dust them with well-ground sugar, and cut them to your taste, and return them to the oven, and let them finish baking a second time: and if they wish when they beat them, cast in as much white wine as an eggshell, it will be good.

My version of the recipe (shrunk down somewhat!):

3 eggs
1 egg yolk
2/3 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1/8 tsp orange flower water
1 tsp wine
Preheat the oven to 175 degrees

Beat the eggs, wine and orange flower water till fluffy but not dry. Add the sugar slowly while continuing to beat. Once well blended and dissolved, add 2 cups of flour gradually, continuing to beat. This will make a sticky dough.

Put this into a loaf tin and bake in a moderate oven for about 15 minutes till the loaf is set and firm to the touch but not browned. 

Allow to cool. Slice thinly.

Drop the oven temperature to 140 degrees. Lay the slices of cake on oven trays and put back in the oven for another 10-15 minutes until lightly browned.

 These strongly resemble modern biscotti minus almonds, and are crisp and light and would be great with coffee.