Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (71 page)

These cakes are so popular that some pastry shops can’t make them fast enough. To those unfamiliar with such things, this cake will appear to have been invented by a professor from the Sorbonne. Here is my exact re-creation of it:

half a liter (about 1/2 pint) of milk

100 grams (about) of medium-sized semolina
¹⁰⁰

65 grams (about 2-1/3 ounces) sugar

50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces) of pine nuts

10 grams (about 1/3 of an ounce) of butter

2 eggs

a pinch of salt

a dash of vanilla

The amount of semolina doesn’t have to be exact, but make sure to use enough so that the cake will be firm. Chop the pine nuts with a mezzaluna until they’re half the size of a grain of rice.

Once the semolina has cooked in the milk, add all the other ingredients and lastly the eggs, quickly blending everything together.

Make a shortcrust pastry dough with the following ingredients:

200 grams (about 7 ounces) of flour

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of butter

100 grams 2-1/3 ounces sugar

1 egg

If this doesn’t moisten the flour sufficiently, add a drop of white wine or Marsala.

Use a baking pan in which the cake won’t turn out more than two fingers high. Grease the pan with butter and cover the bottom with a thin layer of pastry. Pour in the mixture and use strips of the dough to make a lozenge-shaped grid on top. Gild with egg yolk, and bake. Let cool before serving, sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar.

Whether or not this cake really comes from Switzerland, that’s what I’m calling it. You’ll see that it’s not bad.

Make a dough of the proper consistency, using the following ingredients:

300 grams (about 10-1/2 ounces) of flour

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of butter

salt, to taste

a dash of lemon zest

enough milk to moisten the dough, and some to put aside

Take a medium-sized baking pan, grease it with butter, and cover the bottom with a layer of dough as thick as two (
five-lire
coins. Use the rest of the dough to make an edge all around, and place in the middle 500 grams of reinette apples or any other tender apples, peeled and cut into sections the size of walnuts. Sprinkle 100 grams (about
3-1/2 ounces) of sugar mixed with two pinches of cinnamon powder and pour 20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of melted butter over the apples.

Bake in the oven, and serve hot or cold. Serves seven or eight people.

The cinnamon, lemon zest, and melted butter poured over the apples are my own additions, but strictly speaking they aren’t necessary.

Those who care to do so can also make this cake without flour— but I think the flour is necessary to give it the right consistency.

250 grams (about 8-4/5 ounces) of powdered sugar

150 grams (about 5-1/4 ounces) of Hungarian flour or extra-fine flour

50 grams (about 1 -2/3 ounces) of sweet almonds mixed with a few bitter almonds

6 whole eggs and 3 egg yolks

lemon zest

Once you’ve blanched and thoroughly dried the almonds, crush them in a mortar with a tablespoon of the powdered sugar. Mix with the flour until there are no lumps. Put the rest of the sugar in a bowl with the egg yolks and lemon zest. Blend with a wooden spoon for a quarter of an hour. Add the flour and mix for another half hour. Using a whisk, beat the egg whites in a different bowl. When they have become stiff enough so that a silver
two-lire
piece stands up in them, fold the egg whites into the other bowl and blend everything together very gently.

To bake, pour into a copper baking pan greased with butter and dusted with confectioners’ sugar and flour. Or you can use a strainer with a wooden ring, and cover the bottom with a sheet of paper.

250 grams (about 8-4/5 ounces) of sugar

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of extra-fine flour

50 grams (about 1 -2/3 ounces) of sweet almonds, with three bitter almonds

9 eggs

lemon zest

Blanch the almonds and dry thoroughly in the sun or on the fire. Crush with a tablespoon of sugar until very fine, and then mix with the flour.

Put the remaining sugar and the egg yolks together in a copper or brass bowl. Put the bowl over a low flame, and beat the sugar and egg yolks with a whisk for more than a quarter of an hour. Remove from the flame and pour in the flour that has been prepared with the almonds and the lemon zest. After you have mixed all of this together for a while, add the egg whites, thoroughly beaten, and blend it all together gently. Put the mixture in a baking pan greased with butter and dusted with flour mixed with confectioners’ sugar, and bake.

This is a lovely-looking, very refined cake.

120 grams (about 4-1/4 ounces) of sugar

120 grams (about 4-1/4 ounces) of Hungarian flour

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of sweet almonds

4 eggs

Blanch the almonds and dry in the sun or on the fire. Take a third of the larger almonds and divide them in half at their two natural lobes. Cut the other almonds into slivers. Using a whisk, beat the eggs and the sugar in a copper or brass bowl on the fire at 20 degrees Celsius (a little less than 70 degrees Fahrenheit) for a quarter of an hour. Remove this mixture from the fire and add the flour, blending gently. Pour into a smooth mold (it doesn’t matter whether it’s round or oval) greased with butter and dusted with a teaspoon of confectioners’
sugar and a teaspoon of flour mixed together. It would be best to use a mold of such a size that the cake turns out roughly four fingers high when done. Bake in the over or in a Dutch oven at a moderate temperature. When it has completely cooled, slice it into layers about a centimeter (about 1/2 inch) thick.

Make a custard with:

2 egg yolks

3 deciliters (about 1-1/4 cups) of milk

60 grams (about 2 ounces) of sugar

15 grams (about 1/2 ounce) of flour

10 grams (about 1/3 ounce) of butter

a dash of vanilla

Once the custard comes to a boil, spread it on one side of each slice of the cake and then reconstruct the cake by placing one slice on top of the other.

The custard will turn out better if you first put the butter with the flour on the fire, cooking it without letting it brown. Then, when it has cooled to tepid, add the egg yolks, milk, and sugar and put it back on the fire.

Now it’s time to frost the whole outside of the cake with a glaze or icing. Using a small saucepan, boil 230 grams (about 8 ounces) of sugar in a deciliter (about 2/5 of a cup) of water until it becomes a little sticky between your fingers, but doesn’t form a thread. Another way You’ll be able to tell that it’s done is when it stops steaming and begins to form rather large bubbles. Remove from the flame, and when it begins to cool add the juice of a quarter of a lemon and blend thoroughly with a wooden spoon until it becomes as white as snow. Should it start to become too firm, just add a little bit of water to make it the consistency of a dense cream. Once this glaze has been prepared, toss in the sliced almonds, blend well, and ice the cake with it. Use the almonds that you split in half to decorate the top, sticking them in straight up.

You can use a fruit filling instead of a custard, but with the custard the cake comes out quite delicious, so I recommend that you try it this way.

250 grams (about 8-4/5 ounces) of Hungarian flour

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of butter

100grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of powdered sugar

4 eggs

4 tablespoons milk

a dash of vanilla sugar

Blend the butter, sugar, and egg yolks together for half an hour. Add the flour and milk and blend thoroughly.

In order to get this and similar cakes to rise, you can use an odorless white powder
¹⁰¹
that’s made in Germany and England. Mix 10 grams (about 1/3 of an ounce) of this powder with the beaten egg whites. If you cannot find this powder where you live, you can substitute 5 grams (about 1/5 of an ounce) of baking soda and 5 grams of cream of tartar mixed together. Pour the cake batter into a large, smooth mold that you have greased with butter, and bake in the oven or Dutch oven. Let cool before serving.

200 grams (about 7 ounces) of sugar

150 grams (about 5-1/4 ounces) of butter

170 grams (about 6 ounces) of potato flour

100 grams (about 3-4/5 ounces) of wheat flour

12 egg yolks

7 egg whites

lemon zest

First blend the egg yolks, butter, and sugar thoroughly in a bowl. Then add both types of flour and after you’ve worked the mixture for about half an hour, add the beaten egg whites. Put the batter in the oven in a copper baking pan greased with a little butter and dusted with flour as usual. Keep the height of the cake at about one finger. When it is done, cut into wedges and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Here are three different recipes for shortcrust pastry dough or short pastry. You can choose the one that best suits your needs, but I recommend the third recipe as the most refined, especially for pies.

Recipe A

500 grams (about 1 pound) of flour

220 grams (about 7-3/4 ounces) of white sugar

180 grams (about 6-1/3 ounces) of butter

70 grams (about 2-1/3 ounces) of lard

2 whole eggs and one egg yolk

Recipe B

250 grams (about 8-4/5 ounces) of flour

125 grams (about 4-1/2 ounces) of butter

100 grams (about 3-4/5 ounces) of white sugar

1 whole egg and one yolk

Recipe C

270 grams (about 9-1/2 ounces) of flour

115 grams (about 4 ounces) of sugar

90 grams (about 3 ounces) of butter

45 grams (about 1-1/2 ounces) of lard

4 egg yolks

orange zest

If you want to make short pastry without losing your mind, grind the sugar very fine (I use confectioners’ sugar) and mix it with the flour. If the butter is still hard, work it beforehand with wet hands on the pastry board until it becomes soft. Make sure that the lard isn’t rancid. Blend everything to form a dough, but try to handle it as little as possible or it will “burn,” as the chefs say. For this reason it’s better to use the blade of a knife to blend the ingredients at the beginning. When convenient, you can make the dough the day before, because raw dough doesn’t go bad, and the more time it sits, the more tender it will be when baked. When using the dough for pasticci,
pies, cakes, etc., first roll it out with a smooth rolling pin, and then for a nicer appearance, use a ridged rolling pin to roll the part that will go on top, and then gild with egg yolk. If you use confectioners’ sugar, the dough will roll out better. In order to work the dough less, you can mix the leftover pieces with white wine or Marsala, which will also help to make it more tender.