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Recipe for "Rich Cake" for Twelfth-Night Celebration
Recipe from "The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy" by Hanna Glasse
Ingredients
4 pounds flour, dried and sifted
7 pounds currents, washed and rubbed
6 pounds of the best fresh butter
2 pounds Jordan almonds, blanched and beaten with orange flour water
4 pounds eggs - put half of the whites away
3 pounds double refined sugar, beaten and sifted
1/4 ounce mace
1/4 ounce cloves
1/4 ounce cinnamon
3 large nutmegs, grated fine
A little ginger
1/2 pint "sack" or sherry wine
1/2 pint of right French brandy
Sweetmeats to your liking (candied lemon peel, orange peel, and citron, or melon)
Directions
Work butter into cream with hands; then add sugar and mix well together, well beat and strained through a sieve. Work in almonds first, and then put in eggs. Beat together with the set-aside egg whites until they look white and thick; then put in sack, brandy, and spices. Shake in flour by degrees, and when oven is ready, put in currents and sweet meats, as you put dough into your hoops.
Four hours baking in a quick oven (350°)
You must keep beating with hands, all the while you are mixing dough
Fills two large wooden baking hoops (probably 10 normal ring - or Bundt-type - baking pans)