Digby Cakes with Splenda®
Master Tirloch of Tallaght
In The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened,1 we find the recipe for these excellent small cakes:
Take three pound of very fine flower well dryed by the fire, and put to it a pound and a half of loaf Sugar sifted in a very fine sieve and dryed; Three pounds of Currants well washed, and dryed in a cloth and set by the fire; When your flower is well mixed with the Sugar and Currants, you must put in it a pound and a half of unmelted butter, ten spoonfuls of Cream, with the yolks of three new-laid Eggs beat with it, one Nutmeg; and if you please, three spoonfuls of Sack. When you have wrought your paste well, you must put it in a cloth, and set it in a dish before the fire, till it be through warm. Then make them up in little cakes, and prick them full of holes; you must bake them in a quick oven unclosed. Afterwards Ice them over with Sugar. The Cakes should be about the bigness of a hand breadth and thin; of the cise of the Sugar Cakes sold at Barnet.
Duke Cariadoc published his redaction of this recipe in Cariadoc's Miscellany.2
When I make these cakes, I use a lightly floured, flat surface and roll out the dough or "paste" to the "handsbreath thickness." To produce uniform-sized cakes, I use an ale glass to cut out the cakes. I find that I get a better cake when I bake them for 25 minutes at 350 degrees on ungreased baking pans.
Redaction
3 cups flour
¾ cup sugar
3 cup currants (you can substitute baking raisins)
2 sticks butter, softened
4 tbsp cream
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp nutmeg
2 tsp sack
For icing the cakes, I use ½ cup of powdered sugar and enough water so you can spread it on the cakes as soon as they come out of the oven. Powdered sugar will dissolve faster in warm water. A pastry brush is good for painting each cake with the sugar glaze.
For those of us who are watching their sugar intake, I worked on the redaction to remove sugar and substitute Splenda® instead:
Splenda® Redaction
3 cups flour
1 cup Splenda®
3 cups currants (you can substitute baking raisins)
2 sticks butter, softened
4 tbsp cream
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp nutmeg
2 tsp sack
For icing the cakes, I use 1½ cup of Splenda® instead of powdered sugars.
Notes
- The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened, edited by Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson (Wiltshire: Prospect Books, 1997), 185.
- David Friedman, and Elizabeth Cook, "Desserts, Appetisers, Etc.," Cariadoc's Miscellany, <http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/desserts.html> (1 March 2006).