French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [237]
As soon as it is cool enough to handle, turn upside down on to a cake rack. When cool, the cake can either be iced with the same mixture as described for the chestnut and chocolate cake on page 453, or covered with lightly-whipped cream.
The quantities given make a small cake, but it is somewhat solid and goes quite a long way.
GÂTEAU AU CHOCOLAT ET AUX AMANDES
CHOCOLATE AND ALMOND CAKE
lb. of bitter chocolate, 3 oz. each of butter, caster sugar and ground almonds, 3 eggs, 1 tablespoon each of rum or brandy and black coffee.
Break the chocolate into small pieces; put them with the rum and coffee to melt in a cool oven. Stir the mixture well, put it with the butter, sugar and ground almonds in a saucepan and stir over a low fire for a few minutes until all the ingredients are blended smoothly together. Off the fire, stir in the well-beaten egg yolks, and then fold in the stiffly-whipped whites. Turn into a lightly-buttered shallow sponge-cake tin, of 7 to 8 inches diameter, or a tart tin with a removable base (see page 69). Stand the tin on a baking sheet and cook in a very low oven, Gas No. 1, 290 deg. F., for about 45 minutes. This cake, owing to the total absence of flour, is rather fragile, so turn it out, when it is cool, with the utmost caution. It can either be served as it is, or covered with lightly whipped and sweetened cream. It is a cake which is equally good for dessert or for tea-time.
CRÊPES DENTELLES
Here is a nice dish for children, rather different from the ordinary pancakes. Ingredients are 2 large eggs, their weight (which will be 4 to 5 oz.) in butter, flour and sugar, and about pint of milk, a tablespoon of rum, salt.
Stir the eggs, flour, sugar, a pinch of salt and the just melted butter all together until quite smooth. Gradually add the tepid milk and stir until you have a batter of about the consistency of thick cream.
Grease a heavy iron pan very, very lightly with butter, heat it and make very small pancakes with scarcely more than one tablespoon of the batter at a time. If you have a large pan, two or three little pancakes can be made at the same time, for the batter should be just stiff enough not to run in the pan unless it is tilted. Turn the pancakes over in the usual way and, when they are done on both sides, lift them out with a palette knife. They are nicest eaten with melted butter and sugar.
These quantities make twenty to thirty small pancakes, so they can be halved. The rum, little though it is, makes quite a difference to the flavour as well as to the crispness of the batter, but if you prefer to omit it, flavour the mixture instead with grated lemon or orange peel.
It makes little difference, with this batter, whether the pancakes are made at once or if it is left to stand. And the amount of butter used for cooking them should be infinitesimal.
GELÉE DE GROSEILLES
RED-CURRANT JELLY
This system of making red-currant jelly was given by Eliza Acton in her Modern Cookery, published in 1845. She says that it is a Norman receipt. It is the one I always use and find it makes, as Eliza Acton says, ‘superlative’ jelly. I was preparing the fruit for it one day when a friend from Paris arrived upon the scene. ‘What on earth,’ she said, ‘are you doing wasting your time taking all the stalks off? At home we put the whole lot in the pan. It all goes through the cloth; the stalks don’t affect it at all.’ In every other detail, she told me, the system she used was the same as Miss Acton’s. Ever since, I have followed her advice. So weigh your ripe red-currants and put them into the preserving pan, stalks and all, with an equal weight of sugar. Then proceed as follows, according to Miss Acton.
‘Boil these together quickly for exactly 8 minutes,