Dripping cake

soDripping is the fat that drips off beef when it cooks. I've never used it before, and wasn't even sure I could buy it, but...tadaaaaa!

Finest Beef Dripping, the 'authentic flavour' - a 'Great British Ingredient'. I've made steamed puddings using beef suet before, so I thought it might have a similar flavour. 
The difference between suet and dripping, is (I think), that dripping is the fat and other liquids that drip off meat as it is cooked, whereas suet is pure fat and comes (mostly) from around the kidneys of animals (sheep, pigs or cows). None of this sounds terribly appetising for putting in cakes....

So, the recipe is this:
1Ib flour
6oz good dripping
2oz candied orange peel 
1/2 Ib raisins
6oz sugar (pieces or Barbados)
1/2 pint milk
1 large tablespoon black treacle
2 eggs
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Sift flour and rub in the dripping thoroughly. Chop the candied peel and stone the raisins. Add to the flour with the sugar. Beat the eggs to a froth and stir into the mixture with enough cold milk to make a stiff paste. Warm 1/2 gill of the milk with the treacle, mix with soda and add. The mixture should drop easily from the spoon. Turn into a greased and papered cake tin, and bake in a moderate to slow oven for 11/2-2 hours.
This is a good well-keeping cake, suitable for lunch or country tea.

Country tea!! Sounds great.

So, rubbing dripping into flour takes ages, as the dripping is hard (harder than butter) and takes longer to soften. This is perhaps a good idea, as the mixture stays colder for longer. I was careful to aerate the flour this time.

Adding the raisins and candied fruit was easy.

I used this sugar:

As the recipe called for 'pieces' and we had it on the shelf. I have no idea if this will work - the sugar may not melt and so the cake might just be savoury.....

Warming the milk, and adding the treacle was delightful, and smelled of gingerbread, but once I added the soda (and it fizzed up), my son noticed that it looked like a saucepanfull of mud...again, not particularly appetising.

I wanted to get the oven temperature as low as possible (the vinegar cake wasn't cooked in the middle), and I think it was on about 160c, for 2 hours, during which time it rose well, was liquidy in the middle, and (most disappointing) didn't give out a cake cooking kind of smell at all. 

So I raised the temperature to just below 200c, and it started to drop over the paper lining onto the oven floor, filling the kitchen with smoke! Oh dear. 

I put a baking tray under the loaf tin and it's still in there. God knows what's going to happen next. Still no nice smells....starting the think there's a reason why dripping has gone out of favour...

Oh dear. Well the good news is that it actually cooked all the way through:

And the smell was nice at the end. A kind of warm, slightly Autumnal and nostalgic scent which initially gave me the hope that the cake would be delicious. And when it came out, it looked good. The top was crusty, and slightly chewy like a really deep cookie, and shiny as if it had been brushed with beaten egg.

 The very crisp corners and grooves where the baking paper has creased kind of look attractive, until you realise that this is the result of beef fat, which has melted and then solidified (I suppose...) into this shiny shape.

 Inside, it hasn't been mixed properly...I was trying not to overmix it and make it heavy, like the vinegar cake, but obviously under did it this time. Although the marble effect is not unattractive I think...

 Okay, and so to the taste. I cut a slice for myself of about half an inch thick and ate it. There's quite a pleasant flavour, reminiscent of suet puddings (if you like steamed puddings, this is not a million miles away), however, there is one quite revolting drawback...the film of thick grease that sticks to the upper mouth afterwards and can't be removed....Arghhhhhhh! I would say that this alone gives me reason to NEVER MAKE A DRIPPING CAKE AGAIN!

My two sons tried it. The first (aged 7) ate half a slice, and then said "Actually can I stop eating this now please?" and the second (aged 12) ate one mouthful and spat it out.

My partner refused to even try it, which I thought was odd as he grew up in the 60's in a small mining village in Yorkshire, which I thought would have been the epicentre of dripping, but he said "only one boy in my village had bread and dripping, and he was the same boy who ate sugar sandwiches..."

So there you go, I don't think Dripping Cake will be on the Retro Baking blog again (or in our house). Shame, I like the idea of it.

My first two cakes have been a bit of a disaster. I'm going to try and make one that's nice next. Maybe the Lemon Whisky Cake!

Vinegar Cake

 

VINEGAR CAKE is a recipe in THE CONSTANCE SPRY COOKERY BOOK, by Constance Spry and Rosemary Hume (1956 reprinted 1967) and I've wanted to make it for a few weeks. Today was the day. The sky was a weird mustardy thundery spooky kind of colour and the rain was non-stop...vinegar cake it is!

So apparently, vinegar acts as an egg substitute! Not sure how that works, (I always thought egg was used to bind, and I can't see how vinegar can do that?) but in this recipe, you mix the vinegar with slightly warm milk, and baking powder, and it works brilliantly. Kazaaaam!
Oh, have just done a bit of googling and it appears that most people choose cider vinegar or wine vinegar. I've used malt...haven't tasted the cake yet, so hope that's alright...

Half of the delight for me of cooking from old recipe books is the lack of photos and the font.

Ooooooo, just look at that ink still glistening! It's ALMOST, although not quite, as if it's just been typed, and I'm imagining a teeny indentation on the dots where Constance Spry has hit the full stop key on her typewriter with a flourish.

So here's the actual recipe:

In case this isn't readable, and just because I quite like typing, I'll type it out again here:

This is a plainish cake, without eggs, suitable for picnics or packed lunch, eaten with cheese.

How nice. Cake and cheese seem to be out of fashion at the moment. It's mostly cake and coffee, or cream. Cake with cheese sounds ripe for a comeback.

6oz. butter or dripping (I used butter)
1Ib. flour (I used plain)
1/2Ib. sugar (I used caster)
1/2Ib. currants
1/4Ib. raisins (don't think there's any need to stone them anymore is there?)
3 tablespoons vinegar (I used malt but that may be a mistake...)
Just over 1/4 pint of milk
1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda (I used baking powder as I'd run out of bicarb)

Rub the fat well into the flour, add the sugar and cleaned fruit. Put the vinegar into a large jug and add the milk, reserving a spoonful or two. (Not sure what this was in reserve for, and in fact I ignored it and used the whole lot). Warm this slightly and mix it with the soda. Add quickly to the jug, being careful to hold it over the bowl as the mixture will froth up. (It's true, like an exciting science experiment!)

Stir it at once into the mixture and turn into a prepared tin (I used a loaf tin lined with baking parchment - double on the base). Bake in a moderate oven for the first 20 minutes and then lower the heat slightly for the next 40-50 minutes. (Okay, my oven door has to be propped closed with a broom, and the temperature has been worn off, so I guessed at the highest temperature for about 25 minutes, as I can't heat the oven first, and then turned it down to around 200c until it smelt really really good, and the tiny kitchen was too hot to bear - around 40 minutes).

It came out looking like this:

And dropped beautifully out of its' tin onto the wire rack like this:

I'm going to cut it open in a minute....but first smells are very encouraging, no malt vinegar wafting through at all. It reminds me of my Grandma's kitchen, and smells light, like a fruit scone, not heavy (although it weighs a brick).

Ahem...I cut it open, and, well actually it's sort of RAW in the middle!!!

And the photo is upside down. Ahhhhh, it's all gone wrong already. The end slices aren't too bad, and it gets worse as you cut through towards the centre. 

BUT, the taste (not the uncooked bits) is really good. Satisfying, fairly sweet, absolutely no taste of vinegar, and, although I was a bit too downhearted to try it with cheese on a picnic, I feel sure that if it was cooked more thoroughly, it would be a splendid addition to any packed lunch or picnic.

So, reading back through the chapter, I think I can see where I've gone wrong (maybe). I was quite dismissive of holding back a couple of spoonfuls of milk, but actually there's full instructions for the technique earlier on in the chapter, under Method 1. The rubbing-in method.

I'm going to type the whole thing out as I'm hoping that by typing, it'll make me actually read it.

Method 1

In this the fat, varying in kind and proportion according to the type of cake in hand, is rubbed in with the fingers; this should be done thoroughly so that it is evenly distributed throughout the flour. When properly done the fat is no longer distinguishable and the flour acquires a rougher, somewhat crumbly appearance. During the process the flour should be raised with the fingers and allowed to drop down into the bowl from time to time: this keeps it cool and aerated. If this process is carried out too heavily or continued for too long the mixture, instead of being light, firm and crumbly, becomes moist. After the incorporation of the fat is completed other dry ingredients are added, sugar and fruit, etc., then the eggs (or vinegar in their place) and finally the milk and the baking soda. After the addition of liquid the mixture is not beaten but merely stirred thoroughly and then turned into a cake tin.

The following summing-up of rules for the above method will serve for reference: 

1. Sift the flour with the spices into a bowl.
2. Rub the fat well into the flour, lifting the flour up all the time, and rubbing and sifting it through the fingers.
3. Mix in the sugar, cleaned fruit, chopped peel, nuts etc.
4. Beat the eggs until frothy, and mix them with a good three-quarters of the milk. If using vinegar in the place of eggs, pour the milk on to the vinegar in a deep bowl or jug.
5. Heat the remaining milk until barely lukewarm, then add the soda.
6. Mix the eggs and milk (or vinegar ad milk) quickly and lightly into the dry ingredients, then lastly add the milk and soda. N.B Sour milk may be used with advantage, and if this is done a smaller amount of soda is required.
7. Stir only enough to mix thoroughly. Do not beat vigorously as this toughens the mixture and makes the cake heavy. The consistency of the mixture should be moist without being too wet; it should just drop from the spoon.
8. Turn immediately into a prepared cake tin, i.e. greased, papered, and floured, and bake in a moderate oven, 350-380F., 40 minutes to 1 1/2 hours according to the size of the cake. Rock-cakes, plain fruit, vinegar, eggless, and dripping cakes are made by this method.

Spry, C & Hume, R., The Constance Spry Cookery Book. 8th Ed. London: DENT

So, this is where I think I went wrong:

1. Overdid the rubbing in of the fat (it did get a bit moist, and I didn't do any of the lifting and aerating).
2. The vinegar/milk/soda. You mix most of the milk with the vinegar and then only warm up a bit of the milk and add soda to that.
3. I definitely beat the mixture, rather then stirring, which made the cake heavy. The consistency was more like dough than of a dropping consistency which probably made it too dense, and then maybe more difficult to cook in the centre?
4. The temperature was too high, so although the outside was cooked, it needed longer in the middle. 

 Sigh, a lot to learn!