Chapter 13
Technology Transforms the Victorian Pantry
The late-nineteenth-century American cook was at the epicenter of changes so profound in terms of ingredients that it was much like the music aficionado in the late 1990s, who used a turntable for his LP collection while relying on a large group of CDs, and then a smattering of digital downloads from iTunes for his MP3 player. The old sat next to the new; the from-scratch traditions were taken for granted, while the newer convenience foods were adopted with the enthusiasm only the long-suffering can muster for life-changing technology. In terms of baking, the first area that was revolutionized by science was leaveners, a shift away from yeast to natural forms of baking soda and chemical leaveners such as baking powder.
Yeast has been the leavener (this term comes from the Latin word levare, which means “to raise”) of record for over four thousand years, and many home cooks, at least until the mid-1800s, still followed the old method of creating their own starter for bread baking: making a thin batter with flour and water and then letting it stand in a warm place until it fermented. This worked reasonably well in kitchens that were already full of yeast spores, but it was by no means a sure thing. No wild yeast spores might be attracted, or the starter might go “off” and sour. Other methods included making starters with potatoes or grapes. Flour, salt, boiling hop water, potatoes, sugar, and a little ginger was one recipe. Old potatoes were best, since they have more sugar; the hops and ginger prevented the yeast from souring.
The starter mixture would have to be kept warm, stirred several times while rising, and then put away in glass—not metal—containers the next day. (Metal would cause the yeast to turn dark.) And, of course, starters had to be fed and maintained properly, something that was not a problem in a household with a full-time cook who was constantly making bread. However, when bread could be purchased at a store and when the woman of the household now had to do her own cooking, this old-fashioned starter method was hardly convenient.
Other than making one’s own starter at home, the cook had three choices by Fannie’s time. Brewer’s yeast was nothing more than the skimmings from fermenting beer vats. Dry yeast cakes were brewer’s yeast combined with cornmeal, cut into small biscuits, and dried. These were relatively low in potency, since they had a smaller percentage of yeast. (Cornmeal was used here; starch or flour would have been used in England.) Finally, there was compressed yeast, small moist cakes enclosed in tinfoil. It contained a very high percentage of yeast, making it more potent; thus it became the preferred yeast among both home and professional bakers. It did not last long, however—just a few days—and had to be kept cold in the ice chest. Brewer’s yeast was all that was available in the United States until the mid-1800s. However, it spoiled easily and it had to be kept cold and used within a short time after preparation.
Baking powder, a mixture of baking soda and cream of tartar, was invented by a chemist named Hoagland who founded the Royal Baking Powder Company in 1866. The problem with these early mixtures was that the chemical reaction took place rather quickly, and much of the leavening power was dispersed during the mixing of the batter. Chemists needed to find alternatives to cream of tartar, which they did as early as 1864—the substance was referred to as MCP (monocalcium phosphate) and also as ACP (acid calcium phosphate). Additional refinements led to SAS (sodium aluminum sulfate) in the early 1890s, then SAPP (sodium acid pyrophosphate) in the early 1900s, and, finally, SALP (sodium aluminum phosphate) in 1960.
The other ingredient that came a long way in the twentieth century and therefore affected home baking was sugar. Cane existed a long time before the refining process that turned it into the white crystalline sugar that we know today. The stalk was simply chewed, and the sweet juices were released and enjoyed. The next step was to use vertical wooden rollers to crush the cane stalks, extracting about 25 percent of the available juice. This primitive method was eventually supplanted by a series of cast-iron rollers that boosted production to 40 percent. Eventually, steam-powered rollers came into vogue, and processors were capturing 65 percent of the total cane juice. To produce sugar, the cane syrup was simply boiled in a series of large kettles; lime juice was added to bring about the coagulation of undesirable albuminous ingredients, which rose as a scum to the top of the boiling sap that was removed. The boiled and clarified syrup eventually ran into granulation tanks, where it cooled, and a crust of crystals formed on top. The mixture was stirred, scattering the crystals throughout the syrup. The final operation was called potting, in which the mixture was placed into hogsheads (these were casks containing roughly sixty gallons) that had holes in the bottom, allowing molasses to drain out from the sugar mixture into a cistern below. This last phase of the initial process might take up to six weeks to ensure proper drainage.
At this point, the sugar had to be refined. One old method used lime water, bull’s blood, and heat. Animal charcoal (made from bones) was introduced in the 1830s from France and was the principal purifying agent in the United States. Sugar then had to be dried, either on floors or in heated drums, and it was also stirred so that the crystals broke up—this was referred to as the granulation stage. However, granulated sugar as we know it today was not invented until 1860, at the Boston Sugar refinery. Before this, loaf sugar was commonly sold in cones. It had to be grated at home before use—a difficult and time-consuming process.
There were yellow sugars as well as white sugars, the former being cruder and having a lower percentage of sucrose, sometimes as low as 80 percent and up to 92 percent. (The best white sugars were 99.8 percent pure.) The whiter the sugar, the more expensive it was. The goal in producing white sugars was to remove all traces of molasses or other impurities to provide a hard, clean, granular sugar. Yellow sugars started with less pure syrup and were boiled in a manner that caused the sugar and molasses to bind together, producing a softer and yellower product. (One can still buy a cone of yellow sugar in some Hispanic grocery stores.) Cube sugar was a later invention that was usually made through the use of molds, centrifugal force, and baking to finish, although sometimes it was simply sawed into cubes. Powdered and bar sugars were passed through fine silk cloths, and starch was added to prevent caking. Red frosting sugar was a Boston specialty used for decorating; it was nothing more than granulated sugar dyed red.
Fully refined, pure, granulated sugar was at the heart of the Victorian love of confections. Brightly colored penny candies, ice-cream parlors, confectionary stores selling sugar sculptures for table decorations, and even birthday cakes, a craze that originated in the 1890s, all got a boost or a start from the availability of refined white sugar. How popular was sugar? Total consumption rose 150 percent from 1879 to 1900, from 2,097 million pounds to 4,488 million pounds. No doubt that Americans had a sweet tooth.
Although Fannie Farmer recognizes the following types of sugar in her first chapter—brown sugar, loaf, cut, granulated, powdered, and confectioner’s—her recipes rely almost solely on fine granulated sugar, with special applications requiring powdered or confectioner’s sugar. Brown, loaf, and cut sugar really had no place in home cooking by 1896.
Perhaps the biggest result of the sugar and chemical leavener industries was the explosion in variety and number of cakes. The list was virtually endless: tea cake, snow cake, caramel prize cake, Empire State cake, sea foam cake, Dolly Varden cake (Dolly Varden is a character in Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge, and the term was often used to refer to a dress of sheer muslin worn over a brightly colored petticoat; this notion of something sheer over something colorful was applied to fish as well as to cakes, as in the Dolly Varden trout), poor man’s cake, one egg cake, white perfection cake, cheap cream cake, walnut cake, orange cake, sour milk cake, lemon cake, and gold cake. One could also find pound cakes, an earlier form of cake including a wedding cake, which used a pound each of butter, sugar, and flour, plus ten eggs and lots of dried fruit, including raisins, currants, citron, almonds, brandy, wine, and spices. Angel cake, similar to the modern angel food cake, was also popular. Yes, they did have fruit cake, made two or three weeks ahead of time from a cup of pork fat, hot coffee, brown sugar, molasses, spices, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, raisins, currants, and chopped dried figs; it “will keep all winter if you lock it up.” The one major exception, a cake that was almost never made, was a chocolate cake. It was, however, becoming a more popular ingredient (chocolate was rare earlier in the century), and one could make chocolate (hot cocoa), Vienna chocolate (this version has beaten egg whites added at the last minute), chocolate Bavarian cream, chocolate blanc mange (milk, gelatine, grated chocolate, sugar, and vanilla), chocolate tartlets, chocolate caramels, and chocolate creams.
The sponge cake was the ultimate all-purpose recipe of the era. It was the basis for Boston cream pie, invented at the Parker House in Boston (two layers of sponge cake filled with pastry cream and drizzled with chocolate ganache). It was often made into an endless series of two-layer cakes with a simple filling, jam for example, with nothing more than confectioner’s sugar as a topping.
VICTORIAN SPONGE CAKE
Although I have developed my own recipe for a modern sponge cake, this recipe is an authentic sponge from the Boston Cooking School and gives you a good idea of what one of its workhorse recipes was really like. I have updated the recipe to reflect modern appliances and mixing methods.
4 eggs, separated
½ teaspoon cream of tartar
8 ounces sugar
4 ounces cake flour
2 teaspoons lemon rind
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon salt
Beat egg whites with cream of tartar and 2 tablespoons of the sugar (reserve the rest) until it holds 2-inch peaks. Whites should still be moist and slightly soft. Remove to a separate bowl. Using the same mixing bowl as for the whites, beat the yolks with the remaining sugar until light and ribbony, 4 to 5 minutes in an electric mixer. Add flour and mix on low speed for 10 seconds. Remove bowl from mixer, add whites, lemon rind, juice, and salt and fold together by hand with a large rubber spatula. Bake in a 375-degree oven for about 30 minutes.
ANOTHER COMMON RECIPE, ONE FOUND ON MANY FANNIE menus, was the French cream cake, similar to Boston cream pie. The earliest recipe we came across was from 1870 in The Godey’s Lady’s Book Receipts and Household Hints. The cake was a standard cold-water sponge cake, baked in a pie pan, split when warm, and filled with the cream. The cookbook suggests, as is the case with a genoise, that the cakes stand for a day or two before serving. We made the Royal Baking Powder Company version of this recipe and discovered something interesting. Since the cream used over one hundred years ago was so much thicker and better, our custard filling came out thin and runny, making slicing difficult. This turned out to be a common problem in all of our testing—matching modern ingredients to Victorian recipes. Other recipes for French cream cake—and this was Fannie’s approach—were based on classic choux paste, the type of pastry used to make éclairs, gougères, and Paris-Brest. This may be the origin of the term “French” cream cake, since choux paste is very French indeed, made by boiling water and butter, stirring in flour, and then beating in eggs one at a time, usually after the mixture has cooled a bit.
The following recipe uses my own slightly adapted recipe for sponge cake filled with pastry cream. The cake needs to sit for twenty-four hours before serving.
FRENCH CREAM CAKE
Although Fannie’s recipe uses a choux paste for the cake, we decided to develop this recipe using the lighter and more appealing sponge cake. It is crucial to beat the egg-and-sugar mixture a very long time until it is very pale and light. This may take five minutes, which will seem almost forever. You will be tempted to stop beating at three minutes or so. If using an 8-inch round cake pan, be sure that it is at least two inches high, otherwise the batter will rise above the sides of the pan. This is one cake you do not want to underbake because it will collapse on you. Make sure that the middle of the cake springs back when lightly touched with your finger or a fork.
For the cake:
½ cup cake flour
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
5 eggs, room temperature
¾ cup sugar
For the cream:
2 cups milk
3 tablespoons cornstarch
¾ cup sugar
Pinch salt
4 egg yolks
4 tablespoons cold butter, cut into 4 pieces
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1. For the cake: Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two 8- or 9-inch round cake pans and cover pan bottom with a round of parchment paper. (If using an 8-inch pan, it must be at least 2 inches high.) Whisk flours, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl (or sift onto waxed paper). Heat milk and butter in a small saucepan over low heat until butter melts. Off heat, add vanilla; cover and keep warm.
2. Separate 3 eggs, placing whites in the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the whisk attachment (or large mixing bowl if using hand mixer or whisk). Reserve the 3 yolks plus the 2 whole eggs in another mixing bowl. Beat the whites on high speed (or whisk) until whites are foamy. Gradually add 6 tablespoons of the sugar and continue to beat whites to soft, moist peaks. (Do not overbeat as stiff, dry egg whites will be difficult to incorporate into the batter.) If using a standing mixer, transfer egg whites to a large bowl and add yolk–whole egg mixture to mixing bowl.
3. Beat yolk–whole egg mixture with remaining 6 tablespoons sugar at medium-high speed (setting 8 on a KitchenAid) until eggs are very thick and a pale lemon color, about 5 minutes (or 12 minutes by hand). Add the beaten whites to the mixing bowl and then sprinkle the flour mixture over beaten eggs and whites. Mix on the lowest speed for 10 seconds. Remove bowl from mixer, make a well in one side of the batter, and pour melted butter mixture into bowl. Fold mixture with a large rubber spatula until batter is evenly mixed, about 8 additional strokes.
4. Immediately pour batter into prepared baking pans; bake until cake tops are light brown and feel firm and spring back when touched, about 16 minutes for 9-inch cake pans and 20 minutes for 8-inch cake pans.
5. Place one cake pan, bottom side down, on a kitchen towel; run a knife around pan perimeter to loosen cake, cover pan with a large plate. Invert pan and remove it. Remove parchment paper and then invert cake onto cooling rack. Repeat with remaining cake.
6. For the cream: Heat 1¾ cups milk; combine cornstarch, sugar, salt, yolks, and remaining milk; slowly whisk hot milk into egg mixture; return mixture to pot. Heat mixture over medium-high heat, about 3 minutes, stirring constantly until boiling. Boil 20 to 30 seconds, until thick enough to drop from the spoon without running; remove from heat; whisk in butter in 4 pieces; cool over an ice bath. Add vanilla extract.
7. Split cooled cakes into four layers and fill with cream. Chill for 24 hours. Let sit at room temperature for about 2 hours before serving.
For the recipe for Portsmouth cake, a sponge cake with a sliced orange filling and orange frosting, go to www.fannieslastsupper.com.
OCTOBER 2009. IN VICTORIAN AMERICA, TABLE MANNERS WERE rapidly becoming the supreme test of refinement and character, and any misstep would instantly betray one’s poor upbringing. Clearly, society has taken a serious turn for the worse. In fact, the “Meal of the Century” that I was re-creating was not just about the food; it was also about an event, about dining, about the ritual of sitting around the table with a group of interesting people and bringing the entire experience up to a new (or, I guess, old) level. Could we re-create a formal fin-de-siècle dinner party, or would we simply look like a bunch of starved chimps in monkey suits?
A high Victorian dinner party—now we are talking about the wealthy, not just the aspiring middle classes—was formal, so it was tails for the gentlemen and full dress costume for the ladies. One was not to arrive early, and fifteen minutes was the outer limit of being tardy. Cocktails were not served (I intended to break that rule by serving punch before dinner), so nothing was consumed before the butler announced dinner (which might have been nothing more than a slight nod to the mistress of the household). At that point, a procession would form, the host leading the way into the dining room, escorting the most honored lady of the evening, elders preceding young invitees, and the gentlemen escorting their assigned dinner partners. One had to take one’s seat properly, at the proper distance from the table, and the napkin was intended for the lap, not the shirtfront “like an Alderman.” Even with a large number of courses, up to twelve or so, the meal was to be served within two hours or less: it was a briskly paced event. At the end, the ladies would adjourn to the drawing room, leaving the men at the table with their cigars and brandy. After a bit, the gentlemen joined the ladies, and demitasse and candies were served.
Dining in a formal setting involved a complex series of rules and regulations. Rules in the dining room were nothing new: they existed as far back as the Middle Ages, when diners were hardly sophisticated, drinking from common goblets, sharing the same board (plate) with another guest, and eating with one’s fingers. By the Victorian era, the thirst for etiquette guides was on the rise in the United States, with five or six books being published each year on the topic, double the rate earlier in the century.
The essence of table etiquette in Victorian times derived from the disturbing relationship between eating and animal behavior. One manual said, “Eating is so entirely a sensual, animal gratification, that unless it is conducted with much delicacy, it becomes unpleasant to others.” These dinner parties were, in effect, a test of one’s control over bodily appetites. One was never to appear greedy, draining the last drop from a wineglass or scraping the last morsel from the plate, and one was never to eat hurriedly, implying uncontrolled hunger. Since meal preparation was not shown in public, all the plates were prepared out of the view of the diners and then simply served, the servants being careful never to touch a plate, avoiding doing so by using a napkin, or small silver trays for passing.
Eating with one’s fingers was a no-no, even for fruit, which was to be handled with utensils. Teeth marks were also viewed with horror as an “unmistakable imprint of bodily processes.” Eating noisily was also abhorrent, and it was supposed that those who were well-bred instinctively understood the nature of this offense and would therefore avoid it. Hands were to be kept below the table unless occupied, but never so with scratching one’s head or picking one’s teeth. Coughing or sneezing was also not allowed; the diner so afflicted was to leave the room to perform these functions. Conversation was to be lively, but never heated or moody. A calm, orderly table was the goal, even in the event of a spilled wineglass. No apology or fuss was to be made in those circumstances; it would interrupt the calm flow of the perfect evening.
The social context for all of this was the notion that the United States was a democracy, governed not by a higher power but by the individual’s ability to control him- or herself. In Europe, where the lower classes were separated from the aristocracy, this mattered less. The peasants could eat with their fingers all they liked. Here, the various classes were constantly interacting and etiquette was important to keep the peace—and, I would guess, also to reassure ourselves that a democratic society was a workable notion, an improvement over the European culture that we had so recently left behind.
The Victorians are to be applauded for their emphasis on good manners, but there existed a fundamental conflict in their approach, one that is still at the center of American life today. On one hand, our society was more communal than Europe’s, so an emphasis on personal self-control was a means of making the melting pot a workable reality in lieu of a more formal hierarchy. (The promise of America was that the middle class could purchase a book on etiquette and learn to behave like those at a higher station in life—this was the dream of upward mobility.) At the same time, this rather rigid display of rules and manners did the opposite; it made the rich and powerful even more distinct from those below. In effect, wealthy Americans wanted to be an aristocracy, but they wanted to feel good about it at the same time.
As we moved to the last course before coffee, we were sadly disappointed with Fannie’s offerings. There were two dessert courses, the first of which might be a molded jelly, a mont blanc (cooked, puréed, and sweetened chestnuts decorated with a cream sauce), a pudding, or frozen pudding (ice cream). The cakes on her menus were, however, rather uninspired, the choices including sultana (raisin) roll with claret sauce, sponge drops, almond crescents (I tested these and they were awful), and then French cream cake with a filled baked choux paste. (See above for our final version of this recipe, which uses sponge cake, not choux paste.) It was time to look across the Atlantic to find something more elegant, the sort of dessert that might indeed have made it to Boston or New York in the late nineteenth century.
The most comprehensive and best illustrated reference book on the subject is The Victorian Book of Cakes, which was reprinted in a new edition in 1991. The desserts in this book were at the top of their class at the time, winning prizes or included in major confectionary exhibitions. It should also be noted that this was an English, not an American, work, and Fannie’s repertoire was a great deal more down-to-earth. That being said, The Victorian Book of Cakes provides a good overview of baking around 1900. The basic items in the book included shortbread, gingerbread, sponge cake, meringues, cookies, and pound cake. There were special-occasion cakes, including birthday, wedding, and christening cakes. Charlottes and trifles were their own category, and then there were the savoy molds—cakes baked in fancy molds, decorated, and sometimes filled.
We soon discovered that savoy cake had become a standard cake of the time. A recipe in the 1846 edition of The Modern Cook by Charles Francatelli calls for a pound of sugar, fourteen eggs, and four and a half ounces each of all-purpose and potato flour. The cake is baked in a fluted savoy mold, which is well coated with fat and sugar, in a moderate oven. The savoy molds were tall, fluted molds that looked a bit like the Chrysler Building in New York or vertical thrusts of ladyfingers. Usually there was a simple round base, and then one or two upper layers of decreasing diameter. American cakes quickly became standardized into simple round layers by the twentieth century, although we did find examples of these molds in an 1899 cookbook, Warne’s Model Cookery.
The ultimate French cake book is Cuisine Artistique by Urbain Dubois (Paris, 1888), which contains page after page of fantastic creations, including Pêches à l’Andalouse, Fruits à la Madeleine, Gâteau Meringue à la Polonaise, and Gâteau Princesse de Galles. The one that piqued our interest the most was Gâteau Mandarin, which is a high dome of sponge cake decorated with candy roses, with their leaves, and then brushed with an orange syrup much like a typical genoise. This cake was simply a variation on the basic savoy cake, which was popularized by the famous chef Antonin Carême. Dubois added his own touch: tangerines that were filled with ribboned or striped orange and crème jellies (layered jellies were, of course, nothing new), and then used as decorations around the base of the cake. This recipe was also known as Savoy Cake with Oranges. A few weeks later, we came across a recipe in The Epicurean that was similar to the Dubois creation, called Mandarin Cake.
Mandarin Cake
This cake is best made over the course of two days. On the first day, make the clementine sherbet, marzipan, almond butter cake, simple syrup, and lemon leaves. On the second day, make the clementine segments and Grand Marnier pastry cream and cover the cake with marzipan. Finish the cake by filling the decorative cake mold with pastry cream and then decorating the cake with the lemon leaves, orange segments, and orange sherbet halves.
The recipes for Clementine Sherbet, Almond Blanc Mange, Clementine Jelly, and Sugared Lemon Leaves (these decorative elements are optional) can be found at www.fannieslastsupper.com.
EASY MARZIPAN
This is an easy and foolproof version of marzipan because it incorporates corn syrup, cornstarch, and confectioner’s sugar instead of a fondant, which can be fussy since it uses a sugar syrup. It rolls out well and is easily modeled into fruit shapes. It can be prepared one day ahead and stored at room temperature, wrapped tightly in an airtight container.
9 ounces almond paste
1 ounce sliced almonds, unblanched
4 ounces cornstarch
4 ounces confectioner’s sugar
6 to 8 tablespoons corn syrup
1. In food processor, process almond paste, almonds, cornstarch, and confectioner’s sugar until mixture is sandy in texture, about 1 minute.
2. Add 6 tablespoons corn syrup and pulse (about 15 one-second pulses) until mixture just comes together. If mixture seems dry, stop processor, remove top, and press mixture together with fingers. If it doesn’t hold together, add more corn syrup, 1 tablespoon at a time, until mixture will just hold together.
3. On work surface, gently knead marzipan until smooth, about 1 minute. Wrap tightly and let rest for at least an hour before using.
ALMOND BUTTER CAKE
Moist and buttery, with a hint of clementine essence, this cake forms the base of the mandarin cake and is also used to make the fluted savoy cake that sits on top. The key to making the batter is to smoothly incorporate the almond paste with the sugar and butter so that there are no remaining lumps of almond paste. Because of the volume of cake batter, you need a 6-quart-capacity mixer for this recipe; the alternative is to halve the recipe and make two separate batches.
Coating for savoy mold:
4 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon Wondra flour
4 tablespoons vegetable shortening
For the two cakes:
3 cups (12 ounces) cake flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons table salt
15 ounces almond paste, room temperature, cut into ½-inch pieces
4½ tablespoons zest from 6 to 8 clementines
3¾ cups plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
24 ounces unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces, softened slightly
18 large eggs, room temperature
13½ ounces blanched slivered almonds, finely ground
4 large egg whites
½ cup apple jelly
1. To coat the pans: Preheat oven to 350 degrees and adjust oven rack to middle position. Line 12-inch cake pan with parchment and spray with nonstick cooking spray. In small bowl, stir together the sugar, cornstarch, and Wondra flour. Heat 6-cup decorative cake mold in oven for 15 minutes. (We used a tall fluted mold, the typical shape used in French patisserie of the period.) Meanwhile, in small saucepan, heat vegetable shortening over low heat until melted. Remove mold from oven and immediately pour melted shortening in mold. Turn mold to coat evenly and pour out excess shortening. Sprinkle sugar mixture into mold and, holding mold on its side, turn so that sugar mixture coats the mold evenly. Gently knock out excess. Set mold aside.
2. To make the cakes: Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together in large bowl; set aside. In standing mixer fitted with paddle attachment, mix almond paste, clementine zest, and just 1 cup of the sugar on low speed, until almond paste is softened, about 2 minutes. Increase speed to medium low and slowly add 2¾ cups sugar (reserving 2 tablespoons), alternating with butter, until mixture is smooth, with no remaining lumps of almond paste. Increase speed to medium high and beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Reduce speed to medium and slowly add eggs, scraping down sides and bottom of mixer and paddle as necessary, about 2 more minutes. Add ground almonds and mix to combine. On low speed, mix in flour mixture until just combined. Remove bowl from mixer and fold batter once or twice with rubber spatula to incorporate any remaining flour.
3. Reserve 5 cups batter and set aside. Spoon remaining batter into prepared cake pan and smooth top with offset spatula. Bake until top is golden and skewer inserted into cake shows moist crumbs, about 40 to 50 minutes. Cool cake in pan on wire rack for 1 hour. Invert onto wire rack to cool completely, about 2 hours. Wrap tightly until ready to cover with marzipan.
4. While first cake is cooling, adjust oven rack to lower-middle position. In standing mixer fitted with whisk attachment, whip whites until frothy using medium speed. Slowly add remaining 2 tablespoons sugar and whip on medium high until whites hold soft peaks. Briefly stir reserved cake batter and then using rubber spatula, fold 1/3 whites into reserved cake batter to lighten. Fold remaining whites into batter until just combined. Fill prepared biscuit mold with batter within ½-inch from top rim. (You may have a little leftover batter.) Place mold on sheet pan and bake until toothpick inserted into center of cake is clean, about 75 to 85 minutes. Let cool on wire rack for 20 minutes, and then carefully invert cake onto wire rack to cool completely, about 3 hours. When cool, carefully hollow out cake to no less than ½ inch from exterior of cake. Allow to dry at room temperature overnight. (Drying out is important so that it is structurally sound when filling with pastry cream.) Reserve a few thin pieces of removed cake (preferably from the bottom of the cake) to use later to seal up hollowed cake after it has been filled with cream.
5. To cover the bottom cake layer with marzipan (best done on the second day): Place 12-inch cake on serving platter, bottom side up. Using offset spatula, spread a thin layer of apple jelly over top and sides of cake. Lightly dust work surface with confectioner’s sugar. Using rolling pin, roll out marzipan to 16-inch diameter (about 1/8-inch thick). Using rolling pin, carefully roll up marzipan and then unroll onto cake. Smooth marzipan onto top and sides of cake. With paring knife, trim excess marzipan.
Yield: Enough for one 12-inch cake and one 6-cup molded cake.
GRAND MARNIER PASTRY CREAM
This cream is used to fill the fluted cake that sits on top of the base layer.
½ vanilla bean
1½ cups half-and-half cream
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
Pinch table salt
5 yolks
2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons Grand Marnier
½ cup heavy cream
1. With paring knife, slice vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape out seeds; reserve seeds. Heat half-and-half cream, 1/3 cup sugar, vanilla bean seeds, and salt in medium heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat until simmering, stirring occasionally to dissolve sugar.
2. Meanwhile, whisk egg yolks and remaining 1 tablespoon sugar in medium bowl until thoroughly combined. Whisk in cornstarch until combined and mixture is pale yellow and thick, about 30 seconds.
3. When half-and-half mixture reaches full simmer, gradually whisk into yolk mixture to temper. (It is important to add hot mixture to yolks slowly to prevent yolks from curdling.) Return mixture to saucepan; return to simmer over medium heat, whisking constantly, until 5 or 6 bubbles burst on surface and mixture is thickened and glossy, about 30 to 60 seconds. Remove from heat and whisk in Grand Marnier. Press wax paper or plastic wrap directly on surface, and refrigerate until cold and set, at least 3 hours, or up to 48 hours until ready to use.
4. Gently stir chilled pastry cream to loosen. In chilled medium bowl, whisk heavy cream to soft peaks, about 2 minutes. Fold whipped cream into pastry cream (this mixture can be make up to 3 hours in advance) and fill hollowed biscuit mold just before serving.
Yield: about 3 cups.
ASSEMBLING THE CAKE
Just before serving, you have to assemble the various components of the cake. We used an ornate silver cake stand—you will want something rather fancy, given all the work you went through to prepare it. Note that recipes for the lemon leaves and the filled tangerines, both the sherbets, and the two jellies, can be found at www.fannieslastsupper.com.
1. Arrange optional lemon leaves around 12-inch Almond Butter Cake base (that has been covered in marzipan), which is positioned on a serving stand.
2. Gently hold hollowed-out cake mold upside down, and carefully fill with lightened pastry cream mixture to about ½-inch from bottom. Seal with reserved pieces of cake. Once cake is filled and sealed, place sealed side down over center of marzipan-covered cake.
3. Slice optional jelly-filled clementines pole to pole into quarters and arrange over lemon leaves, around marzipan-covered cake.
4. Place optional clementine sherbet halves around the molded pastry cream–filled cake and on top of the marzipan base cake.
5. When ready to plate, take a photo first! Then, use serrated knife to slice 1 inch off top of cake to reveal pastry cream filling. Serve slice of marzipan-covered cake with 1 sherbet half, 1 jelly segment, and a dollop of pastry cream. Garnish plate with sugared lemon leaf.