Well hello there!
As you may have heard, my second book is called The Baker and the Bookmaker and follows Augie, Michael’s friend and second in command, and Anna, their childhood friend and legendary baker.
Cover reveal coming next month, but you can get a look at it early if you pre-order on Amazon.
In researching this book, I learned a lot about baking in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. And researching included finding recipes.
And those recipes made me hungry. So I decided to test a few of them out and report back to you lovely folks.
Today’s recipe is Shrewsbury Cakes. There are several versions out there, I used the one found here because it seemed the most likely to be period accurate. And like the sweet summer child I was two hours ago, I decided to try to mix it by hand. Because Anna wouldn’t have a mixer and if Anna can do it, I can do it—right? (wrong).
As you can see, with 11 cups of flour… that’s way too many cookies. I’m single and have replaced exercise and healthy eating with writing, I don’t need to be making any cookies, let alone 11 cups of flour worth of cookies. Also, I hate rolling out cookies with a fiery passion-there was no universe in which I was rolling out 11 cups worth of cookies. So, per the suggestion in the recipe, I cut it in thirds.
That got me some pretty awkward measurements but here we go:
3 2/3 c Flour
1 c + 2 1/3 Tbs Sugar
Heaping 1/2 tsp Cinnamon
Heaping 1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1 Egg
1/2 tsp Rosewater (recipe spells it as one word, bottle spells it as 2. I will use rose water from here on out)
1 c + 2 1/3 Tbs Melted Butter
But Ally, you say, that is not exactly 1/3 of every ingredient. Quite right dear reader. I am of the philosophy that there is no such thing as too much cinnamon and if I wanted to increase the cinnamon, I had to increase the nutmeg to keep the ratio balanced. And I bought an entire thing of rose water for this recipe, I wasn’t about to use 1/3 of 1/2 of a teaspoon of it. (I believe you can make it yourself but &^%$ beetles have been feasting on my roses and I have no interest in dealing with that nonsense).
My philosophy on the concept of too much cinnamon.
This also gives me the opportunity to plug one of my absolute favorite local stores, Country Kitchen Sweet Art in Fort Wayne, Indiana. They do ship but I don’t know their international policies. They’re also responsible for the adorable cooke cutters you’ll see shortly.
The instructions in the recipe state to preheat to 325F. Then mix the dry ingredients. All was going well.
Then I was to add the egg and rose water. Again, this went without a hitch. Then I added the melted butter and, if you looked at the recipe the way that I did, you saw the very obvious problem before we even reached this step. Still, I remained hopeful. This recipe has been around for 200 years at least, surely they know better than I do.
Spoiler dear reader, they did not.
I stirred in the butter, and I stirred, and I stirred. Now, I don’t have much to write home about in the way of upper body strength, but it was clear my arm was going to give out long before this became any sort of dough, rather than a pile of slightly damp crumbs.
So I decided to add half an egg. Which helped a little. And then I added the other half of the egg, which didn’t help much at all. And then I melted the rest of the half-used stick of butter in my fridge (approximately 1 2/3 Tbs) and added that. Then I got out my hand mixer because my stand mixer weighs more than a small elephant and I’m lazy.
That was when the dough finally reached a consistency I thought I could at least mash together and then roll out.
Per the instructions, I rolled the dough onto a lightly floured surface (after smooshing it into a ball, that’s not in the instructions but not surprising with that amount of flour).
Pre-rolling
Then I got to use the adorable cooke cutters that I got from Country Kitchen
As you can see, the dough was still a little crumbly. I was worried it wouldn’t make it through the baking process but I was determined to proceed.
I baked them for 20-21ish minutes. My oven beeped at me while I finished unloading the dishwasher so who knows how long that was. As you can see, they didn’t brown much but, after taste testing, I can confirm they’re done.
They don’t look as airy as the ones in the picture and they’re a bit darker in color, presumably because of the additional spices, egg, and butter.
After all that, they taste… fine. They’re decent. I will finish them. I will probably not make them again unless someone in my life is curious.
What I would do differently next time: start with a mixer, probably the stand mixer but at least the hand mixer. I’m curious if that would increase the fluffiness. However, the instructions don’t say to cream the butter and sugar together which would usually result in a lighter cookie so I’m not entirely sure where my issue is at. I may consult my foodie friend and see if she has suggestions. I’ll report back if I learn more.
Overall impression: 3/5. It’s a cookie. I won’t turn my nose up at a cookie, but not worth the effort. I have other spice cookie recipes I prefer, though the rose water does add a little depth of flavor which was a nice change.
Additional note: I brought one to my not-a-niece and she threw it in the trash without comment after a bite. This is the kind of honesty I’m looking for in my life. So, I’m going to say 0/5 from the first grader.
If you know where I went wrong, let me know down in the comments.
See you next week for another one of Anna’s recipes! <3 Ally