Old English Sherry Trifle

A trifle delicious

Taken from A Cook’s Tour of Britain – a ‘sumptuous collection of more than 400 British recipes, both favourite and traditional, gathered through the enterprising network of the WI and presented by Michael Smith, an indefatigable promoter of the pleasures of British food.’

The Book was published by WI Books in 1984 and includes this lovely recipe for Old English Sherry Trifle, variations of which have been with us since the eighteenth century.

INGREDIENTS:

Base:

• 2×7 inch/18cm fatless sponge cakes or 1 packet small sponge cakes
• 1lb/450g apricot puree, apricot jam or quince jelly

Topping:

• 1 pint/575ml double cream
• 4oz/110g glace cherries
• 4oz/110g blanched or toasted almonds
• 2oz/50g each crystallized apricots, crystallized pears or Carlsbad plums
• 2oz/50g crystallized chestnuts
• 4oz/110g ratafia biscuits
• Angelica
• Custard sauce (Waitrose do a fabulously yummy pot of ready-to-eat vanilla custard)
• A good dash of Sherry

 METHOD:

1 Use good quality sponge cakes. Split the sponge cakes in half across their middles: liberally spread them with puree, jam or jelly, sandwich them together and cut into 1 inch/2.5cm fingers.

2 Arrange these in a shallow trifle dish, about 12 inch/30cm across the top and 3 inch/7.5cm deep.

3 Sprinkle the sponge fingers with plenty of Sherry, pour the custard over and cool the trifle base completely.

4 Prepare all the topping ingredients – the actual quantities will depend on the area of trifle to be covered and this is bound to vary slightly. Cut the crystallized apricots or pears or chestnuts and Carlsbad plums into attractive quarters. Cut long spikes of angelica.

5 Empty the packet of ratafias to free them from biscuit crumbs. Make sure that the blanched or toasted almonds are cold or they will melt the cream. Put each topping ready on a separate plate.

6 Whip the cream until it just stands in peaks but doesn’t look like it will be cheese at any minute! Spread a thick layer over the trifle.

7 Decorate at will with the other topping ingredients – serve up in bowls or grab a spoon and get stuck in!

 

Royal Pudding (1957)

This super-sweet desert is more commonly known as Queen of Puddings

With only two weeks until the Royal wedding and and the promise of two gloriously-long bank holiday weekends, what better excuse to take to the kitchen and bake this April?

Prince William and Kate Middleton are having two cakes after all; a traditional multi-tiered fruit cake decorated with edible flowers along with the Prince’s childhood favourite – an unbaked chocolate biscuit cake made to a secret Royal Family recipe by McVities.

In the spirit of nostalgic picnicking, waving union jacks and regal joviality, it was a toss up between a Sandringham Jelly, Jubilee Trifle and a Royal Pudding. The pudding won, based solely on the fact that it might be a slightly less wobbly addition to the food hamper. Just slightly.

Royal Pudding is taken from ‘More Good Recipes’ compiled by the Norfolk Federation of Women’s Institutes in 1957. In her foreword, the then Chairman Isobel M. Hoare notes that during this year members have unearthed ‘not only recipes originating from the Eastern Counties, bus also some dating from many centuries back, hidden in the manuscripts of our forebearers.’

A dense mixture of soaked and sweetened breadcrumbs is smothered with a delicate meringue topping; a super-sweet layer of apricot jam fills the gap. The home-cook and contributor is a Mrs Harvey of Colney, Norfolk who recommends final baking in a slow oven, fusing all three sweet layers together in just under one hour. It’s well worth the wait.

Royal Pudding

Ingredients:

• 3ozs fine white breadcrumbs
• 1oz margarine
• Rind of half a lemon (grated)
• 1 or 2 eggs
• Half a pint of milk
• 1oz sugar
• 1 tbsp jam

Meringue

• 2ozs caster sugar to each egg used

Method:

1. Heat the milk to blood heat and pour over crumbs with sugar and lemon rind.
2. Cut margarine into small pieces and stir until melted. Leave to soak for half and hour.
3. Separate whites from yolks of eggs and stir in beaten yolks.
4. Put in greased dish (I used a 9-inch baking dish) and bake at Regulo 6 (375ºC/425ºF) till brown.
5. (Meanwhile, for your meringue)…beat white of eggs till stiff, fold in caster sugar.
6. Cover pudding with apricot jam and then place the beaten white of eggs and sugar on top.
7. Set in a slow oven. Regulo ½ (120º/250ºF) for approx 1 hour.
8. Decorate with glace cherries and angelica (I used jellied diamonds but the pudding was really sweet enough without)

Irish potato soda bread (1944)

Stud with black olives for a tasty twist

Petit Pois’ gluten-free veggie cupcakes made their debut in the shiny aisles of Selfridge’s this March. A 54 per cent vegetable content means you can snaffle two of your five-a-day for a fiver (my colleague rates the vanilla and courgette cupcake which is presented, perfectly boxed, with a chocolate and beetroot accomplice).

Root veg is a venerable shapeshifter – and has been for generations. Who can deny a piece of home-made carrot cake that’s  surely begging to be up there as the nation’s favourite slice? As a cheap and healthy alternative to sugar and sweetened products during the Second World War, carrots and their  cake was revived during rationing as Alan Wilt describes in his book ‘Food For War.’

It describes the formation of the Producer Guilds by the WI in the summer of 1939 which encouraged members to ‘grow-your-own’. Here, WI member, Mrs Kathleen Talbot from Berkhamstead suggests that WI members with gardens should buy a small extra quantity of vegetable seeds or tubers, ‘principally peas, beans, carrots, onions and potatoes.’ The result, says Kathleen, ‘might be invaluable…and if we escape war none of us will be worse for eating rather more vegetables than usual.’

The fruits (or vegetables) of their labour is evident in the few WI federation recipe books I’ve managed to uncover between 1939-1945. And it comes as no surprise that the ratio of vegetables to meat and dairy produce as primary ingredients in dishes taken from ‘Recipes from the Hampshire Federation of Women’s Institutes’ (1944), is really rather high.

When I say ‘vegetables’ I actually just mean potatoes. The humble tuber. Bar two recipes from a menu of 188 starters, mains, puddings and sweets (try as you might potato can substitute very little in an icing sugar glaze or crab apple jam), every single recipe stars a measure of raw or mashed potato.

Consider a dinner of ‘Scraps potato pie’, or ‘Supper fancy’; a mixture of mashed potato, minced meat, shallots, parsley and nutmeg which is to be prepared in the morning and ‘warmed up when wanted.’ For a sweet take on the faithful spud you can  add jam and oatmeal (Fried potato tartlets); cream of tartar, flour and eggs (Girdle scones) or even cocoa, sugar and a dash of rum for an economical take on hand-made chocolate truffles.

In a rather unadventurous spirit, I plumped for Irish Potato Soda Bread, a contribution from a Miss Westmacott from Bashley in the New Forest. I doubled the ingredients in the recipe below and came away with a delicious loaf, best served warm from the oven with butter and a wedge of cheese. Not quite a cupcake but all the tastier for being home-made.

IRISH POTATO SODA BREAD

Ingredients:

• ¼lb mashed potatoes
• 1 large tsp bi-carbonate of soda
• 1 teacup sour milk or enough to make a stiff dough (to sour your own just add a 2 tsps lemon juice to normal milk and leave to stand for 20 minutes)
• ½lb self-raising flour

Method:

1. Sift the flour, soda and salt together
2. Rub in the potatoes
3. Mix milk in to make a stiff dough
4. Make into a flat cake, score across the top and bake on a floured tin for 20 minutes at Regulo 8 (230ºC/450ºF)

War-time Ribbon Cake

War-time Ribbon Cake gets a 21st century twist

I’ve always felt a loyalty to follow exactly the methods and measurements of home-spun recipes. Estimating the perfect temperature for ‘golden’ biscuits or deciding where I can lay my hands on some good goose fat or orange flower water is part of the excitement of baking my way back through a century of traditional recipes.

But this time it rather backfired. I’d imagined a three-tiered wonder-sponge; pretty as a picture and tasty as a scoop of napoleon-style ice cream. The reality was a dry, flat, flop of a cake – the odd hiccup one can expect to encounter when following a recipe 70 years past its sell-by date.

Ribbon Cake is taken from the Northamptonshire and Soke of Peterborough Cookery Book; a collection of sweet and savoury recipes, household hints and tips for ‘showing produce’ pooled by the many WIs under the federation’s umbrella. There’s not a date to be found anywhere in the publication, but the war-time fonts and cheerful saturated yellow hues of the front cover suggest 1940s.

Alphabetically wedged between Raspberry Buns and Rice Cakes, Ribbon Cake is cousin of the classic Victoria Sandwich Cake which traditionally follows a method of beating together fat and sugar with flour added at the final stage. The Ribbon Cake, however, follows a personalised method based on stirring flour in rotation with the eggs. A dash of baking powder is added for final good measure with expectations for a reasonable level of expertise from the baker who must themselves decide on an adequate size of tin and appropriate temperature and time for baking.

‘I’m not happy with the way this recipe reads,’ says the WI’s Home Economics Adviser Diane Sanderson. ‘The small amount of butter suggested will contribute to it tasting dry but if you followed this method exactly you may get a pancake as a result!’ Phew. That makes me feel a little better, at least.

Diane suggests the following tweaks in line with 21st century tastes:

• Pre-heat oven to 175ºC
• Beat together 6oz castor sugar and 6oz butter
• In a separate bowl, beat three small eggs together in a basin
• Beat egg mixture gradually into the beaten fat mixture, beating well after each addition
• Sieve 6oz self-raising flour into the cake mix and fold in gradually
• Divide into three portions as stated and place into three sandwich tins (max 15cm diameter)
• Bake for 20-25 minutes until risen, golden and springy
• Sandwich together with jam or lemon curd
• Prettify with a light sift of icing sugar and pass on to your nearest or dearest

Bosworth Jumbles (A.D. 1485)

 

This sweet biscuit recipe might be about as vintage as they come. It’s said to have been picked up on the battlefields of Bosworth, having been dropped by the cook of Richard III and is taken from the Northamptonshire and Soke of Peterborough Cookery Book, published by the Northamptonshire Federation of Women’s Institutes in the late 1940’s.

Ingredients:

• ½ lb caster sugar
• ½ lb plain flour
• 6ozs butter
• 1 large egg

Method:

• Put all together in a basin and stir in the egg.
• Cut into pieces the size of a walnut.
• Make into the shape of an ‘S’.
• Put in to a hot tin and bake in a medium oven until pale brown (I baked for 50 minutes at 180ºC/gas mark 5).

Mincemeat & Marzipan Loaf

Close your eyes and it could be Christmas Cake! Nearly.

I made two batches of this yummy loaf last night. Taken from the WI website (view here), it is is no way vintage. For this part I am ashamed but it’s just so quick and tasty I couldn’t resist! Plus, the fat cubes of marzipan and swirls of mincemeat make it a fab substitute to Christmas Cake should your Nigella hat be a bit skewed this festive season.

Happy Christmas to all cake-spot followers and a very special thank you to photographer Camilla for a wonderful year in cake. See you in 2011!

Mincemeat and Marzipan Loaf

Ingredients:

• 115g/4oz wholemeal self-raising flour
• 115g/4oz self-raising flour, sieved
• 115g/4oz butter, cut into pieces
• 85g/3oz dark brown sugar
• 115g/4oz marzipan, cut into cubes
• 2 medium eggs
• 200g/7oz mincemeat
• Topping – 2tbsp demerara sugar

Method:

1. Place flours into a bowl, add butter and rub in until fine breadcrumbs.
2. Stir in sugar and marzipan, mix well.
3. Beat eggs together, then add with mincemeat to dry ingredients, combine evenly.
4. Turn mixture into greased and lined 1kg (2lb) loaf tin. Sprinkle top with demerara sugar.
5. Bake in an electric oven at 180°C/gas mark 4/ fan oven 160°C for 50-60 minutes, until well risen and golden brown.
6. Allow to cool in the tin for 15 minutes, before placing on a wire rack to cool completely. Delicious warm.

 

White Christmas Cake

Snow scene magic is the icing on the cake

All I want for Christmas is a place on a WI baking course. Denman College is the WI’s self-owned Georgian mansion nestled in the village of Abingdon, Oxford, hosting round the year cookery, craft, and lifestyle courses to both WI members and non-members alike.

Denman College was opened in 1948 by the WI’s first Chairman, Lady Denman and now boasts a shiny new cookery school where Mary Berry, queen of cakes, demonstrated a selection of mouth-watering festive recipes in her ‘Perfect Christmas’ repertoire early this month.

Christmas cake has been an annual indulgence for generations. Although WI recipes are set apart via varying methods, ingredients listings and recommended quantities for candied fruit, it features in every old WI cook book I’ve ever come across – usually several times.

A failsafe Christmas cake recipe is etched into the mind of every seasoned cook, some of whom will start baking from as early as March. Anne Harrison, Chair of Denman College and long-time WI member, began her festive bake-off last month – she’s been making Christmas cake for her family in Yorkshire for nearly 45 years following a family recipe.

Butter, rum and ground almonds are part of her secret mix. She insists on making her own almond paste and relies on Vostizza currants (otherwise known as pinheads due to their tiny form) to avoid chomping down on the stones or stalks of dried fruit. Come summer-time, she’ll whip up at least 15 cakes (minus the icing) for the Great Yorkshire Show – portions are served with a generous slab of Wensleydale cheese.

Such is the ease and versatility of a Christmas cake mix, you can really go to town with the decorations, or, instead, opt for a simpler approach. After leafing through old WI recipe books, I plumped for a White Christmas Cake which is a lighter twist on the traditional slice – less treacle – more caster sugar and crystallised fruits.

You can ice as you please depending on how much time you have. There are some excellent roll-out options for both marzipan and icing on supermarket shelves, however, nothing beats a coating of Royal icing to create the ultimate snow scene. Merry Christmas!

 Author and WI cookery tutor Jill Brand brings us an updated version of a classic White Christmas Cake recipe, variations of which have featured in WI cook-books books since 1950. For the almond paste and icing topping, I used my Grandma’s recipes.

For more information on Denman College and its cookery courses, visit www.theWI.org.uk

 Ingredients:

115g/4oz glace cherries
115g/4oz glace pineapple
115g/4oz crystallised ginger
115g/4oz sultanas
115g/4oz raisins or chopped peel
45ml/3tbsp) brandy
250g/9oz butter
250g/9oz caster sugar
4 large eggs
350g/12oz plain flour
115g/4oz chopped walnuts

For the almond paste:
150g (5oz) icing sugar
150g (5oz) caster sugar
300g (10oz) ground almonds
2 eggs, beaten
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp almond essence

For the icing:
1lb 2oz/500g icing sugar
3 egg whites
1 teaspoon glycerine

Method:

• Wash syrupy coating from cherries, pineapple and ginger in warm water and then pat dry.
• Cut cherries in half and coarsely chop pineapple and ginger. Soak with sultanas, raisins and chopped peel in brandy.
• Cream butter and sugar until light. Beat in eggs.
• Fold in half the flour, soaked fruits and any liquid with walnuts. Fold in remaining flour.
• Spoon into a greased and lined 18cm/7inch round deep cake tin, slightly hollow out centre.
• Bake at 300ºF, 150ºC/gas mark 1 for 2¾ hours. Leave to cool.

 For the almond paste:
Sieve the sugars into a bowl. Add ground almonds and mix well. Add the egg, lemon juice and essence. Mix together well, and spread evenly over cake.

 For the royal icing:

• Crack eggs whites into a bowl and stir in icing sugar until a think paste is formed.
• Whisk with a hand blender to form stiff peaks before stirring in 1 teaspoon of glycerine and spread over your cake with a palette knife (ensuring top is level).
• Create a snow scene effect by teasing icing into small peaks with a standard knife.
• Tie with a thin red ribbon.

Granny’s Toffee Apple Pudding (1939)

Apple pie gets a sparkly make-over

An illuminating cocktail of cracks, bangs, fizzes and firecrackers will set the skies alight this week while, down below, huddles of spectators keep toasty by the roaring flames of a well-stacked bonfire.

A fat and sticky toffee apple is always the order of the evening but Granny’s Toffee Apple Pudding, taken from The Country Housewife’s Handbook, might just be the next best thing.

Produced by the West Kent Federation of Women’s Institutes in 1939, the book is a practical mix of home essentials, and includes everything from vegetable sowing charts and an advised ‘medicine chest’ for the prepared housewife to ‘the apiary’ – a veritable mini-bible chapter for first-time bee-keepers which lists the many benefits to be found in a nice bit of bees-wax (bat repellent, waterproofing boots and a ‘pleasing cough mixture’ are among my favourites).

Distributed on the brink of the Second World War, the handbook was to become an invaluable source of reference for the rural housewives and mothers who looked to their WI and fellow members for support and advice in matters of the home. At this time, Lady Denman, the first WI Chairman, advised WIs ‘not to lose sight of their peacetime functions’, encouraging members to instead maintain ‘health, strength and good spirits in the villages’ through tradtional handicraft, cooking and cultural activities.

The numerous re-prints, updates and editions of the books, which spanned another 21 years, are testament to its popularity. This simple pie recipe falls under a ‘Fruit Cookery’ chapter fit to burst with apples – cakes, ‘downys’ and a brown betty pudding show why this humble fruit will always be the pride of Kent.

Ingredients

For the suet crust:

• 250g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 100g suet, fresh or dried
• 100ml milk
• 2 egg yolks

For the pudding:

• 4 eating apples
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 3 tbsps caster sugar
• 2 tbsps demerara sugar
• 2 tbsps golden syrup

Method

For the suet crust:

1.   Place the flour and baking powder in a bowl and stir together. Add the suet.

2.   Beat the yolks and milk together separately, add to the dry ingredients and mix to a firm dough.

For the pudding:

1.   Line a medium-sized pie dish with the crust.

2.   Fill three parts with peeled, cored and sliced apples.

3.   Add a good squeeze of lemon and sweeten with caster sugar.

4.   Cover with a thin layer of crust and on it spread golden syrup (I gently warmed mine in a pan to form a runny glaze). Sprinkle with demerara sugar.

5.   Bake in a moderate oven (I baked at gas mark 6/200°C/fan 180°C/400°F) for 50 minutes) until the apples are cooked and the crust is a golden brown.

Lemon surprise pudding (1950)

A cloud-like sponge hides the tangy lemon custard below...

Any pudding, cake or biscuit with the word ‘surprise’ in its title tends to leave you wanting more. I found this zesty little number moonlighting as Lemon Sponge Soufflé in Personal Recipes of the East Kent Federation of Women’s Institute; a handbag-sized booklet packed with medicinal remedies, meaty broths, entrees, chutneys and sweets – the best-kept culinary secrets from WI members in south-east England during the 1950’s.

 Alongside ‘Aunt Martha’s pudding’, a ‘Spiced Fruit Whip,’ and a ‘Prunefaux Muran’ (a tipsy combination of prunes, sherry and sugar), recipes were tried and tested by WI members before being collated and bound, along with tasteful pencil illustrations, to invoke ‘memories of friends in the county.’ A particularly delightful back section on fabric hails the arrival of nylon and its ability to ‘withstand the usual effects of moths, mildew and salt water.’

As materials have evolved, so too has the development of traditional recipes. The Lemon Sponge Soufflé became more commonly known as Lemon Surprise Pudding, retaining an old-school magic thanks to the separation of tangy lemon custard which lies beneath a light sponge topping.

 The original recipe from 1950 uses teacups and tablespoons in the measuring, with little guidance on tips and baking temperatures. To ensure you get it right first time I’ve taken this recipe from WI Book of Puddings by Janet Weir (1984) – an updated version on a classic pud – and a great way to round off autumn supper.

 Serves: 4

 Ingredients:

• 50g/2oz butter
• 100g/4oz caster sugar
• Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
• 2 eggs, separated
• 25g/1oz plain flour
• 275ml/½ pint milk

 Method:

• Heat oven to gas mark 4/180ºC/170ºC/350ºF.
• Butter a 1 litre (2 pint) pie dish.
• Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
• Beat rind into butter and sugar. Beat in egg yolks.
• Sieve the flour and add it by degrees with the milk, followed by the lemon juice (it will curdle – but don’t worry!)
• Beat the egg whites stiffly and fold evenly into the mixture.
• Turn into the pie dish and bake for 40 minutes until golden brown.
• Surprise! You’ll find that the curdle mixture has separated into a lemon custard with sponge top.

Victoria Sponge Sandwich

The epitomy of afternoon tea...

Sweet, fluffy, and unmistakably British – the Victoria sandwich still reigns supreme in village fetes, festivals and on afternoon tea menus across the nation. It kick-started the BBC’s The Great British Bake-Off only last month, as ten amateur bakers were forced to gauge just how long to beat their eggs, how much jam to spread in the filling and how long to bake their sponges in a nail-biting blind bake challenge.

The simple appeal of a Victoria sandwich – both light and buttery with a hint of raspberry jam – means the ‘vintage’ recipe has required little adaptation. The Women’s Institute’s Victoria sandwich cake is the cornerstone of nearly every WI cook-book or baking guide ever published, and the Yorkshire WI Recipe Book (1957) is no exception.

Compiled from recipes recommended and tested by members of the Yorkshire Women’s Institutes (now split into several federations due to the sheer size of the county), the book sold 65,000 in its first edition – published by a county ‘rightly proud of its cookery experts’.

In comparison to the detailed and varied methods of baking from today’s top chefs and bakers (Nigella uses corn flour while Mary Berry swears by margarine instead of butter for a lighter texture), this recipe shows baking basics at their best.  

Ingredients:

• Weight of two eggs in butter, sugar and flour
• Two eggs
• Raspberry jam to fill
• Icing sugar to dust

Method:

• Cream butter and sugar together
• Add beaten eggs and fold in the flour (if plain sift in half a teaspoon baking powder).
• Bake in 7-inch sandwich tin in moderate oven for 25 minutes (I baked at gas mark 4/160ºC (fan)/180ºC).
• When cold, split open and spread with raspberry jam (or lemon curd if you fancy).
• Lightly dust the top.

Today’s tip

Home economist Liz Herbert offers these useful tips in her book, The WI Book of Cakes…

• If the batter curdles, add a spoonful more of flour
• Fold in the flour using a large metal spoon using a cutting action so as not to knock out any of the incorporated air
• Line tins with lining paper. When cool, turn out onto a tea towel or oven glove before placing on a cooling rack. This prevents the top of the cake from being marked.