Week 4 - Shropshire Cakes

After last week’s Ling Pie extravaganza, we figured everyone might appreciate something that’s a little .... ok, a lot less labour intensive. This week’s recipe dates from the mid 17th century and is courtesy of Madame Susan Avery via Peter Brears’ Traditional Food in Shropshire

To make a Shropshire cake: 

Take two pound of dryed flour after it has been searced fine, one pound of good sugar dried and searced, also a little beaten sinamon or some nottmegg greeted and steeped in rose water; so straine two eggs, whites and all, not beaten to it, as much unmelted butter as will work it to a paste; so mould it and roule it into long rouses, and cut off as much at a time as will make a cake, two ounces is enough for one cake; then roule it in a ball between your hands; so flat it on a little white paper cut for a cake, and with your hand beat it about as big as a cheese trancher and a little thicker than a past board; then prick them with with a comb not too deep in squares like diamons and prick the cake in every diamon to the bottom; so take them in a oven not too hot; when they rise up white, let them soake a little, then draw. If the sugar be dry enough you need not dry it but searce it; you must brake in your eggs after you have wroat in  some of your butter into your flower; prick them and mark them when they are cold: this quantity will make a dozen and two or three, which is enough for my own at a time: take off the paper when they are cold. 

Oh ....  in case you don’t have a cheese trancher lying around, you’re looking to make cakes that are roughly 5” or 6” in diameter. Have fun and remember, we’d love to see/hear about your results!