Let’s celebrate by making ratafia cakes
Take 8 fl oz: apricot kernels, if they cannot be had bitter Almonds will do as well, blanch them & beat them very fine with a little Orange flower water, mix them with the whites of three eggs well beaten & sifted, work all together and it will be like a paste, then lay it in little round bits on tin plates flour’d, set them in an oven that is not very hot & they will puff up & be soon baked.
Makes 36-40
4 fl oz/ 110 g/ 1 cup ground almonds; 2 egg whites; 1 teaspoon orange-flower water or orange liqueur; 6 oz/ 175 g/ ¾ cup caster (superfine) sugar; rice paper
Today we know that bitter almonds may contain prussic acid, so it is wise to use ready-ground sweet almonds and a little orange liqueur for extra flavour instead. Set the oven to heat to 350 F/ 180 C/ Gas Mark 4. Sieve or pound the almonds in a bowl to get rid of any lumps. In a second bowl, whisk the egg whites with the orange-flower water or liqueur until stiff. Then mix the sugar into the almonds thoroughly and lastly fold in the whisked whites. Cover a baking-sheet with rice paper and place small teaspoonfuls of mixture on it, well spaced apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the cakes are just fawn; they must be soft underneath. Cool them on the sheet, then keep in an airtight tin. Enjoy them with after-dinner coffee.
(Black, Maggie and LeFaye, Deirdre, The Jane Austen Cookbook, p. 125)
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Love the recipe–thanks!! Happy, happy birthday to Jane. :)
I’d like to find this Jane auste cookbook, if only to have an other way to share some moments with Jane..
happy Birthday to Jane, 234 years old but still so present and young in our hearts !
Vic, thanks for this recipe! I mention ratafia cakes in my novel BY A LADY, but I never tried to make them before! And precisely because bitter almonds contain prussic acid, which is poison, my 21st time traveler freaks out when she learns what’s in the recipe.
Happy 234th to Jane. I did a special post on my blog about her today, too!
Happy Birthday, dear Jane!
Happy birthday to myself, Ludwig van Beethoven and Jane Austen :)
Or you could use them to make a syllabub trifle! Yum! Happy Birthday Jane!
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