Waiting for Twelfth Night Cake

Christmas celebrations in Georgian times featured Twelfth Night Cake, a rich fruit cake which was eaten on the feast of the Epiphany on 6 January. Visitors to the Georgian Christmas at Cusworth Hall Doncaster didn’t seem too keen to wait till January to taste this scrumptious cake, so they had an early taste in the Great Kitchen, along with other Georgian Christmas Baking treats. I’d adapted a recipe from John Mollard’s 1803 edition of ‘The Art of Cookery’ .

Twelfth Night Cake

225g/8oz butter
225g/8oz dark muscovado sugar
1 tablespoon black treacle
4 eggs

225g/8oz plain flour
1 teaspoon each of mixed spice, cinnamon and ground nutmeg
225g/8oz each of raisins, currants and sultanas
50g/2oz chopped mixed peel
50g/2oz glacé cherries
50g/2oz ground almonds

Preheat the oven to 160℃/325F/Gas 3. Line a 20 cm/8 inch round cake tin. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy and mix in the treacle. Whisk the eggs lightly and then add them gently to the creamed mixture, followed by the flour and spices. Stir in the dried fruit, mixed peel, cherries and ground almonds and mix well. Then place the mixture into the cake tin. Bake in the centre of the oven for about 1½ hours until the cake is firm and a cake skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave the cake in the tin until cool then turn out and cover with foil until ready to decorate. The cake can be decorated with marzipan and royal icing or left plain as desired.

It looks and tastes a lot like Christmas Cake but there’s an important difference. It was the custom to bake a dried bean and pea in each side of the cake and serve the cake in two halves one for ladies and the other for the gentlemen. Whoever found the bean and the pea became King and Queen for the night. 

We had some visitors from Spain who told us they had the same tradition with the bean in their splendid ‘Roscon de Reyes’.

I’ve tasted the magnificent ‘Galette des Rois’ which is an almond cake made with puff pastry which also has a (ceramic) bean baked inside. 

 

It was thumbs up all round for the Georgian Twelfth Night Cake. I think the Georgians had the right idea just like our Spanish and French friends to round off the Christmas celebrations with this great tradition. Once the wrapping is recycled, the decorations taken down, and the Christmas lights switched off, throw off the gloom of January with a piece of Twelfth Night Cake. Good luck -you could be a King or Queen for the day! 

Rock on, Tommy with Emma’s Rock Buns

Rock Buns or Cakes are that curious relative of scones, similar in appearance and sharing the key ingredient of dried fruit. Originally designed as a teatime treat, they proved popular because the ingredients were fairly cheap. The ‘rock’ refers to their rough surface rather than the texture.

They were loved by soldiers in World War 1  amongst other recipes from the Home Front  and promoted by the Ministry of Food in World War 2 rationing, as they could be made with reduced sugar and fewer eggs than other bakes. 

Many families had their own recipe Rock Buns or Rock Cakes and ours was no exception. It was my Grandma’s sister, Emma who provided the trusted family recipe for Rock Buns. It was her signature bake!

Emma, Jim, cousin baby Elaine and me

My great aunt Emma, seen here with her husband, Jim in their garden had a recipe for Coconut Rock Buns where 4oz/110g desiccated coconut replaced the dried fruit. I remember eating these and Rock Buns during the 1950s when we stayed with at her home in Manchester every summer holiday.

Rock Buns

12oz/340g plain flour

2 tsps baking powder

4oz/110g butter or lard

Pinch of salt

4oz/110g sugar

4oz/110g currants or raisins

2 eggs

1 teacupful of milk

Sieve the baking powder with the flour. Rub the fat into flour and salt then add the sugar and the fruit. Beat the eggs and add these to the mixture with the milk. Mix well. Put on a greased tin or on greased baking sheets and shape into small rocky heaps with two forks. Bake for 20 minutes in a fairly hot oven.  (400F, Mark 6, 200C)

Mrs Beeton's Everyday Cookery and Housekeeping 

The Best Way

Rock Buns been around since at least Victorian times. They feature in Mrs Beeton’s Everyday Cookery and Housekeeping book 1861 and The Best Way cookery book 1907, not forgetting their starring role in the station tearoom in the 1945 film 'Brief Encounter''. 

Back in World War 1, Rock on, Tommy - but is it a bun or a cake?