More about cakes
For no particular reason, I’m thinking about cakes. Cakes were important in the 1950s, but the presentation wasn’t always the same as ours today. My grandmother, for instance, would have used icing rather than ganache, and varied the sort of icing for the occasion and the cake. She would have filled her sponge cakes and then lightly dusted them with icing sugar for an elegant finish. Big formal cakes (for weddings, for example) had a layer of marzipan and then royal icing on top (as they usually do now) while everyday cakes would have had a simple sugar icing. Cake was a key part of the afternoon tea table. I’ll talk more about this another day (or many other days - there are almost infinite recipes and interesting information): today I’ll just give you some icing recipes from my grandmother’s fifties notebook.
Royal Icing
1 lb icing sugar, 2 whites eggs, 1 dessertspoon lemon juice; for piping add 1 more white of egg. Beat whites of eggs to a froth. Add to the sifted sugar and lemon juices. Stir until mixed and then beat well.
Almond Icing
½ lb icing sugar, ½ lb ground almonds, 1 egg, 1 dessertspoon of rose-water or lemon juice.
Rub sugar through ‘hair’ sieve and add almonds. Beat egg and add lemon juice. Mix with sugar with wooden spoon, then knead with hands till oil appears. Roll out to shape and size required.
Chocolate Icing
1 ½ cups icing sugar,
1 dessertspoonful cocoa
small piece lard on a knife
and 2 tablespoons cold water.
Put all ingredients into a basin and stir over hot water until smooth. The lard is used to give a nice gloss to the icing.
food history, recipes, icing, afternoon tea
October 4th, 2007 at 5:43 am
hi
Thanks, for sharing information.Actually Cakes are the mostly preferred dessert at a reception during ceremonial or formal events.But,for almost everybody,any occasion is best celebrated with cakes, wat do u say.
Nice job u have done,keep up the work.