Banbury Cakes

---------- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05

Title: BANBURY CAKES
Categories: Cakes
Yield: 14 Cakes

3/4 c Light cream
1/2 c Butter
1/4 c Sugar
1 ts Salt
1 pk Yeast
1/4 c Water; tepid
2 Eggs, plus 1 white; lightly
-beaten
1/4 ts Nutmeg; freshly grated
1/4 ts Cinnamon
1/4 ts Cloves
1/8 ts Mace
4 c Sifted unbleached white
-flour; up to 4 1/2 cups
1/3 c Currants

-------------------------------OPTIONAL ICING-------------------------------
3 tb Confectioners' sugar;
-dissolved in
1 tb Milk;and
ds Anise extract

To make a very good Banbury Cake--Take four pounds of currants, and wash
and picke them very cleane, and drie them in a cloth: then take three egges
and put away one yolke and beate them, and straine them with good barme,
putting thereto cloves, mace, cinamon and nutmegges: then take a pinte of
creame, and as much mornings milke and st it on the fire till the cold bee
taken away: then take flower and put in good store of cold butter and
suger. Then put in your egges, barme and meale and worke them all together
an houre or more: then save a part of the past, and the rest breake in
peeces and worke in your currants: which done, mould your cake of what
quantity you please: and then with that past which hath not any currants
cover it very thinne both underneath and aloft. And so bake it according to
the bignesse.--Gervase Markham, The English Hous-wife

Banbury, a town in Oxfordshire, is still famous for its cakes, but today
the most popular ones are flavored with rum. Still, Markham's cakes hold
their own some three hundred fifty years after they were created. Having no
ale barm, we'll use yeast.

Banbury cakes, serve warm with butter and jam, are delicious at breakfast
or tea.

1. In a saucepan, scald cream. Add butter, sugar, and salt. Stir to
dissolve. Pour mixture into a large bowl and cool to lukewarm.
2. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in water.
3. Add yeast, eggs, and spices to cream mixture.
4. In a large bowl, combine 4 cups of flour and currants, stirring until
currants are lightly coated.
5. Add flour and currants to cream

-----