A perfect springtime treat, pretty, dainty Jelly Rolls conjure up images of ladies tea parties, bridal showers and fancy brunches. A Victorian era creation, these delicious confections are made from very thin layers of sponge cake spread with fruit preserves or jelly, rolled up into a neat cylinder, and then sliced into elegant spirals. Light…
Browse through any Victorian era cookbook and you will be rewarded with pages and pages of luscious cake recipes. Some names are familiar, such as Sponge Cake, Lemon Cake or Pound Cake, but many have long been forgotten – Election Cake, Queen Cake, Composition Cake, Taylor Cake and Black Cake (also known as plum cake).…
he turkey is one of the most quintessential American foods, through its association with Thanksgiving and its reputation as one of the bounteous foods that Europeans encountered in the New World. But our modern feast actually bears little resemblance to the 1621 Pilgrim harvest celebration commonly known as the “first Thanksgiving,” or the Puritan tradition…
In the Victorian era it was especially fashionable to name foods after famous people and places. Naming a dish after a geographical location lent a mysterious element to a meal, summoning up images of distant horizons and alluring travel possibilities. Dishes named for people were either a favorite of that famous person or created in…
Deliciously chewy with a slightly crispy coating, chocolate puffs are delightful meringue cookies reminiscent of a baked chocolate mousse. Very simple to make, they require only four ingredients: egg whites, powdered sugar, cornstarch and unsweetened chocolate. A sweet blend of stiffly beaten egg whites and sugar, meringue dates back to the sixteenth century. European cooks…
Marble cake typically conjures up images of a beautifully swirled vanilla and chocolate cake, similar to the look of vanilla fudge ice cream. However, throughout most of the nineteenth century, the swirls in marble cake got their lovely chestnut color from molasses and rich spices such as nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves, not chocolate. As I…