History Bakers: Dorset Apple Cake (The Great British Bake Off - Week 9 – Patisserie Week)

History Bakers: Mrs K. Leng's Dorset Apple Cake (The Great British Bake Off - Week 9 – Patisserie Week)

Apples To Apples… To Apples

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off, this year staff at the History Centre have decided to gather historic recipes and try them out. With patisserie week now finished, here is a recipe that fits my definition of patisserie and hopefully everyone else’s too. 

Around this time of year, I usually end up with a glut of apples. I take a bag full of apples from my mum’s allotment and her neighbour’s allotment too—with permission. I even ended up with extra apples this year after a trip to meet my brother and his family at Beningbrough Hall, near York. Beningbrough Hall was built in 1716 and it is a Grade I listed building in recognition of its architectural and historical significance. Beningbrough Hall consists of a beautiful country house with extensive grounds, a large outdoor play area, and a small book shop. Within the grounds there is a walled garden with all sorts of produce, including a wide variety of different apple trees, many of which I was unfamiliar with. I was able to rescue a few decent apples from the ground, my nieces and nephew saw what I was up to and helped me find a few more. 

Just when I thought I would be content not to see another apple until 2026, one of our regulars at the History Centre very kindly brought us approximately 5-6 bags full of apples. Thank you, Mr. G.

Dorset Apple Cake

With access to enough apples to keep the doctors away for many months, I set about looking for apple-based recipes in our collections and decided upon this Dorset Apple Cake. Below you will see the recipe along with the ingredients I used. As well as thanking Mr G for providing the apples, we also have to thank Mrs K. Leng for providing the recipe, which was published in the Kingston Wesley Methodist Church Bazaar souvenir recipe book in 1962. 

Image: Mrs K. Leng's recipe (C DCE/848/9)

The eagle-eyed amongst you may notice two things—firstly, this recipe calls for self-raising flour and I used plain flour, and secondly, I have not included milk in this photo of ingredients. I did add a small amount of whole milk at the appropriate time, an amount I can only refer to as a “glug.” In addition, I did not knowingly use cooking apples as the apples I got were a real mixed bag...

Image: Most of the ingredients

I began by washing the apples and then chopping them up finely, which I did for textural reasons. I was careful not to leave a pip in… I think the cake would work just as nice with larger slices of apple. I did not remove any skin from the apples except where there were minor blemishes. Once the apples were chopped, I left them in my mixing bowl and covered them with the sugar whilst I weighed and prepared the rest of the ingredients. To this mixture I eventually added everything else and gave it a good mix. Once I had a “stiff paste,”.

Image: The mixed ingredients prior to cooking

I cooked the mixture for one hour until it looked like the below image, though in hindsight I should have left it in the oven for another 10-15 minutes. I say this because I have used this recipe to create much more apple cake since. Not only did I make a larger batch, but I cooked the cake mixture for longer and preferred the overall look, taste, and texture of that cake. Picture the below, still golden and delicious… but browner and a little crispier on top. I managed to use plain flour again, though.

Image: The finished Apple Cake

As usual, I fed the results of my baking to the people in my house and to people at work, who had the following to say:

People in my house:

Dilara – “Good texture. Would be nice with cream.”

James – “This is really tasty.” 

Sofya – “That’s good, I would prefer it with custard.”

Anonymous at the History Centre:

“Totally [heavenly] – extremely moist and delicious taste of apple. Great Autumn treat.”

“Lovely delicate and fruity apple flavour. Very moist!”

“Apples had more of a solid consistency than expected but very nice.”

One day I will make this cake using self-raising flour and cooking apples to match Mrs. K. Leng’s original recipe more closely. I found this recipe easy to make and very tasty, so I will be using it whenever I end up with lots of apples. I consider it a great discovery and I’m glad it has made a cameo in History Bakers. Another bonus with this recipe is that most of the ingredients are cheap, easy to find, and mostly manufactured here. 

History Bakers: Mrs E. Horsley's Lemon Biscuits (The Great British Bake Off - Week 7-8)

With no-one feeling up to Meringue Week or another Pastry bake here is an Archivist staple another biscuit recipe. 

I decided to make lemon biscuits from a recipe book created by the Anlaby Road Methodist Church’s Wives and Mothers Club. The book was complied at some point in 1950, and was filled with delicious recipes submitted by local women. This lemon biscuit recipe is credited to Mrs. E. Horsley. Presumably, since she decided to add this particular recipe to the book, it was one she was very familiar with – and maybe even one of her favourites! 

I chose to make these biscuits because I love lemon-flavoured things, and adding cherry to the mix sounded like a very interesting combination. I was very pleased with the outcome of this recipe, and will likely make the biscuits again in the future!

In the book, this recipe called for:

- 3 oz butter

- 3 oz castor sugar

- Grated rind and juice of lemon

- 6 oz self-raising flour

- ¼ tablespoon salt

- 4 tablespoons condensed milk

- Glazed cherries

None of these ingredients were tricky to find, and most of the instructions were similarly easy to follow – albeit not as detailed as a modern recipe! I’m not very familiar with measuring in ounces, so I wasn’t sure how many biscuits the recipe would make. 

I wound up doing two batches to ensure there were enough for everyone to enjoy. By doubling all of the ingredients, I ended up with just over 20 biscuits – so it’s likely the original recipe meant to make around 10.

I did find myself having to make a guess on just how much lemon to include, as ‘grated rind and juice of lemon’ wasn’t as specific as I would have liked. I ended up using two lemons, with as much rind and juice as I could possibly get out of them, and the flavour came through perfectly!

In grams, the ingredients that I used for roughly 20 biscuits were as follows:

- 170 grams unsalted butter

- 170 grams castor sugar

- Grated rind and juice of 2 lemons

- 340 grams self-raising flour

- ½ tablespoon salt

- 8 tablespoons condensed milk

- 10 glazed cherries

I began by getting my butter out of the fridge to allow it to soften. Then, I pre-heated the oven to 160 degrees Celsius, as the recipe called for a ‘fairly hot oven’. My first batch of biscuits ended up baking for around 20 minutes, rather than the instructed 15, so I increased the temperature to 180 degrees for the rest.

Here’s a picture of my cat, Napkin, trying to get involved with the baking before he was promptly shut out of the room… I made sure everything was clean after he was locked away, I promise!

Image: Napkin trying to get involved

Following the recipe carefully, I first measured out the butter and sugar, beating them together with a whisk until they were soft and fluffy. I used a mini grater to zest the lemons directly into the bowl, then cut each of them in half, removed the seeds, and squeezed in as much juice as possible. Mixing these ingredients together resulted in quite a wet batter.

Image: Mixing the batter

At the time, I worried I had put in too much lemon juice for the volume of batter in the bowl, but it wound up being perfect once I added the flour! In fact, after I folded in the flour, salt, and condensed milk carefully, the mix came together into a dough that looked heavier than I had expected.

Image: The final dough mix

I then greased a baking tray with butter and took small balls of dough from the bowl, rolling them with my hands to get a good shape. I pressed these onto the baking tray, cutting the glazed cherries in half and putting a half on each biscuit. After sprinkling them with a bit more sugar, it was time to put them in the oven!

Image: Cherry additions and into the oven

At 180 degrees Celsius, the biscuits baked for around 15 minutes until they were golden.

Image: The finished Lemon Biscuits

This recipe turned out to be very simple, and resulted in some absolutely delicious biscuits! The staff at the History Centre agreed, commenting:

• ‘Very pleasing as it has just the right amount of bite which then obliges to melt in the mouth.’

• ‘Delicious – a lovely crisp texture with a delicate lemon flavour. Save the middle till the end for a cherry finale!’

• ‘Nice mix of textures with the crunchy biscuit and soft lemony centre.’

• ‘Loved the texture. The cherry gave it a sweet taste to finish!’

• ‘Such a nice lemony flavour and a beautifully chewy yet crunchy texture.’

I will definitely be making this recipe again in the future, these biscuits were delicious!

History Bakers: Orraning pudding (The Great British Bake Off - Week 6 – Pastry)

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off this year staff at the History Centre have decided to gather historic recipes and try them out. With pastry week behind us here is one of our recipes for a pastry pudding.

This recipe comes again from the Sykes family collection [U DDSY], this time it is a 17th century recipe book. However, what we are looking at is a transcript from 1918 created while Sir Mark Sykes was head of the family. While the original has been lost the transcript captures the 17th century feel of the recipe and particularly the interesting spelling! I picked the recipe for the interesting spelling of orange and for the fact that it felt very different to anything I’ve baked before and hoped it would provide both interest and challenge, which it certainly did!

Image: The recipe and ingredients

In case you want to give it a go yourself I've included my best 21st century translation. 

• Peel the skins of 4 oranges, put them in cold water and set them to boil for 10-15 mins
• Drain and transfer the peel into another pan of boiling water and boil for another 10-15 mins until less bitter, then drain well
• Beat the peel in a pestle and mortar until pulp like
• Add 6 egg yolks, 227g of butter, 227g of caster sugar and 227g of grated white bread and beat until combined
• Add a few splashes of double cream and mix until it reaches the consistency of a cake batter
• Line a greased dish with puff pastry about the thickness of a pound coin and add in your pudding mix
• Bake for around an hour depending on the size of your tin until the pudding mix begins to brown on top

I have to say the beginning was the part which confused and scared me the most it involved boiling the orange peel twice until, “the bitter be clean gon out them”! Having never encountered this before I did a bit of a search and found this is a way to indeed reduce the bitterness of the orange peel and it suggested removing as much of the white part as possible and slicing them up into strips which I then did and then boiled them for a 2nd time as directed. All in all, I probably boiled them for about 10-15 minutes, twice. 

Image: Oranges on the boil

At this point I’ll admit I was unsure how these would work in a cake batter of sorts but I pressed on with my (very small!) pestle and mortar. To my (pleasant) surprise I found that they did mash into a juicer, pulp like consistency. However, at this point I did begin to grow impatient and felt held back by the size of my pestle and mortar. I decided to make the switch to my (very 17th century!) blender which was definitely quicker and produced this strange pulp like substance resembling something like pumpkin puree! I was slightly concerned about the slightly chunkier bits of skin remaining so ended up removing some pieces in the hopes of achieving a smoother texture although possibly sacrificing some of the orange flavour.

Image: Mashing/blending the peel

Then it was time to mix all the ingredients together, slightly more comfortable territory. This involved grating white bread (creating quite a lot of mess!), separating 6 egg yolks and leaving me wondering what I’ll do with 6 egg whites… 

Here I assumed I was aiming for something like the consistency of cake batter and used my own intuition to add “a litell cream” for which I added a few drizzles of double cream until it had the consistency I wanted. 

Image: Mixing the ingredients 

Then it was time for the pastry, the instructions were again a little sparse here, I was told to “do some puff past about the dish edgg” which I took to mean line a dish with some puff pastry. For the thickness they stipulated it had to be not too thick but not too thin. Here I decided to revert to the wisdom of M&S and their ready rolled puff pastry – if it’s good enough for Mary Berry it’s good enough for me! I added the pudding mixture into the puff pastry and put it in my preheated oven. 

This point felt very Bake Off because there’s no instructions about temperature or time for baking, simply to, “bake”! I decided on a safe temperature of 180 C (fan) not wanting it too high for fearing of burning the pastry but leaving the pudding raw. In true Bake Off style I put it in and thought the best method would be to stare into the oven until it looked done!! I thought this might be about 20 minutes, it did in fact turn out to be closer to an hour! 

Image: The pastry prior to adding the pudding mixture

The recipe then said to serve it with rosewater and sugar for [sauce]. Only once I started did I realise I basically seemed to be making a caramel of sorts which completely terrifies me (I have no idea how you make it without it burning and sticking to the pan!) So, for fear of burning it, I ended up with a sugary, rosewater flavoured liquid which inevitably hardened into something that was not a sauce at all but in fact just rose flavoured sugar. Overall, an enjoyable experience in which I learnt a lot, not least about boiling orange peel!

Some of my colleagues’ comments:

Caoimhe – “Scrummy! Subtle flavour of the orange – thought it would be ‘too orangey’ but”

Pete – “A strange dish that shouldn’t work, but does – a yin and yang of sweet and savoury contend for dominance in the mouth – the ultimate winner is your taste buds who are richly rewarded for their adventurous spirit. Like a giant orange toad in the hole – 10/10.”

Kyle – “Very tasty filling, an odd combination with the pastry but not bad”

Sol – “Very good! Enjoyed the pastry and the soft filling. It was nice and sweet, not as tarte as I expected. Would happily eat this again.”

Lucy – “Delicious! Somehow a bit sweet and savoury, definitely an interesting combination. I really enjoyed!”

Anna – “Very lovely! Perfect texture and very moist. The orange flavour is just right. Excellent!”

Bonus review from my housemate, Rosemary! – “Really good! It’s giving pastel de nata vibes. Subtle orangey taste, obvious but not overpowering. Pecan pie texture? Can’t completely place it, tastes great though!” 

History Bakers: Chocolate Coconut Fingers (The Great British Bake Off - Week 5 – Chocolate)

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off’s chocolate week, staff at the History Centre tried their hand at making various chocolate recipes from the archive. I was particularly intrigued by a recipe for chocolate coconut fingers. This recipe was taken from a 1962 souvenir recipe book, compiled by members of the Kingston Wesley Church. It was written by Miss B. Harrison, and was altogether quite easy to follow – though I had to make two attempts to get it right!

Image: Recipe for Chocolate Fingers, C DCE/848/9

The recipe called for:

- ½ lb block milk chocolate

- 1 egg

- 1 cup coconut

- ½ cup castor sugar

For my first attempt, I melted the chocolate in a saucepan and then poured it into a cake tin, trying to spread it out into a smooth layer. I must have had it over the heat for too long, because the chocolate started to harden while still in the pan, and it was quite a battle to get it out! I thought at the time that the chocolate layer seemed quite thick, and decided to reduce the amount I used for my second attempt.

Next, I beat the egg in a bowl and measured out a cup of disseminated coconut and half a cup of sugar. I mixed these together until everything was combined, and then spread the mixture on top of the cooled chocolate. For my first attempt, I definitely used the wrong type of tin, and the fingers came out incredibly thick. I also struggled to get them to cook all the way through, and found them very crumbly to pick up and move into a container.

Here's a picture of my failed chocolate coconut fingers! They tasted great, especially chopped up and put on top of some yoghurt, but I wanted to give the recipe another go before bringing it in for everyone to try. 

Image: Attempt No. 1

My second attempt was much better. I started with a flat baking tray and used butter to cover it with a sheet of parchment paper. I made sure that I had everything prepared before I started to melt the chocolate, so I didn’t accidentally cook it for too long! Spreading the chocolate into this tin was far easier, and I laid it in quite a thin layer so it didn’t melt too far into the coconut concoction on top.

Instead of the half a pound that the recipe mentioned, I melted around 150 grams of chocolate – and it still turned out to be too much for the amount of coconut batter I had! Thankfully, because I used a much bigger tin this time, I could just trim off the unused edges of the chocolate.

Image: Adding the chocolate

I made the coconut mix in the same way as my first attempt – I just beat the egg, added in the other ingredients and then mixed them all together. It let me use up the rest of the bag of disseminated coconut, so I didn’t end up with half a bag sitting in my baking cupboard forever. Woo!

Image: Coconut mix before adding to the
rest of the recipe

Using a spatula, I spread the coconut mix onto the cooled chocolate in a layer that was probably around two centimetres thick. I trimmed off as much of the excess chocolate as I could, which was made significantly easier by the baking paper. Then, I put the tray into the oven at 180 degrees Celsius, and baked it for roughly 20 minutes until it was golden brown.

Image: Adding the coconut mix

After they were done baking, I allowed the fingers to cool overnight before cutting them up into fingers and popping them in a tin to take with me to the History Centre. This attempt was such a success that all of the fingers were eaten the same day I brought them in!

Image: The finished Chocolate Coconut Fingers

Some of the comments left by our wonderful taste-testers at the History Centre were as follows:

‘Lovely flavour of the coconut and chocolate together, soft chewy texture – very good!’

‘Very chewy – right ratio of coconut to chocolate’

‘Absolutely delicious! 10 out of 10 – well done.’

‘Super tasty, not a coconut fan but would eat many of these!’

‘Very lovely, soft, sweet – delightful.’

‘Love these! They remind me of coconut Haystacks that my nanna used to make! Fab.’

‘Beautifully light and flavoured – Thanks!’

All in all, I would say that my second attempt at this recipe was a success. Using less chocolate was definitely the right decision, as you only need a small amount to cover the bottom of the fingers and they are already very sweet! I don’t usually like coconut-flavoured sweets, but this recipe was absolutely delicious – I would highly recommend!

 History Bakers: Chocolate Melting Moments (The Great British Bake Off - Week 5 – Chocolate)

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off this year staff at the History Centre have decided to gather historic recipes and try them out. With chocolate week just gone here is one of our chocolate themed recipes.

For chocolate related recipes we had to look in the slightly more recent collections for recipe ideas the chocolate bar itself not being invented until 1847. This took me to one of our recipe books from the Anlaby Road Methodist wives and mothers club (C DCT/1716/1/11) from around the 1950s. This was a collection of recipes from some of the members of the club and this particular recipe was submitted by a Marianne Boyd.

Image: C DCT/1716/1/11 - Recipe for Chocolate Melting Moments

Initially, it grabbed my attention because on Bake Off this week I believe someone made melting moments for an element of their ‘showstopper’ and I’d not really seen them before so was keen to try them out! I looked at the recipe and figured they looked easy enough to make, the recipe was certainly very simple!

I decided firstly that I would double the recipe mainly because I thought if I was cracking an egg I might as well use as much as possible. However, even when doubling it, I was a bit disappointed with the number it produced. So, if you want to make more than say 15-20 of these, I’d maybe triple the recipe (I still had some egg left over!) 

Image: Ingredients for the recipe

Once I’d converted the ingredients to metric, I began by creaming the margarine and sugar. I thought for accuracy’s sake I’d do this by hand and found it came together very easily.

I then added the egg, I’ve never come across measuring egg in teaspoons before, it’s a strange substance to try and measure in quite a small spoon! At this point I realised I didn’t have any vanilla, and I didn’t fancy a trip out so instead I opted to leave it out, I added a drop more egg and hoped the chocolate would be the dominant flavour anyway!

I don’t know if you spotted it, but I realised at this point that the recipe itself had left out the key ingredient - the cocoa! (Sorry Marianne to point out your mistake!) I assumed this could be sieved in with the flour and added my best guess of 2 dessertspoons full. The mixture at this point looked amazing and it did take some willpower not to eat it out the bowl!

Image: 1. Creaming butter & sugar           2. Adding the egg                       3. Mixing in the cocoa 

The final step was to roll into balls and coat in the oats. The mixture was definitely stickier than I thought it might have been for this process but apart making a bit of a mess it worked well.

Image: 1. Rolling the oats                   2. Consequences 

I popped them in the oven at a guessed temperature of about 170 C for 10 minutes. They spread out and hardened a little, so I took them out to cool and harden a bit further before feeding them to my housemates and colleagues for their feedback.

Image: The finished Chocolate                

Melting Moments

Beth – oaty, sweet but not too sweet, a very nice texture!

Rosemary – like a mixture between a flapjack and a soft shortbread. Very good though, tastes nice!

Sol – Really enjoyable! The flavour of the oats and cocoa together was very nice, and the texture was great.

Soft and chocolatey – very nice

Kyle – Very chocolatey and crumbly. Couldn’t really taste the oats.

Caoimhe – Great combination – didn’t taste ‘too chocolatey’ – delicious!

Overall, a very simple and enjoyable recipe to make with excellent melt in the mouth results!

History Bakers: Miss E. Colbridge’s Almond Slice (The Great British Bake Off – Week 4 – Back To School)

History Bakers: Miss E. Colbridge’s Almond Slice (The Great British Bake Off – Week 4 – Back To School)

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off this year staff at the History Centre have decided to gather historic recipes and try them out. This week’s category was Back To School. I decided to interpret ‘Back To School’ quite literally as my own return to baking after a long period of not baking regularly. This blog focuses on my relationship with baking and the first historic recipe I made for the return of History Bakers.

I did a reasonable amount of baking at school as Food Technology was a mandatory subject up to GCSE level and I chose to study it for GCSE too, though admittedly only because we had to choose a technology option. After leaving school, I did little-to-no baking in my shared student kitchens and just as little baking when I was living with my mum over the Summer. I only really returned to baking when I moved in with my current partner who is an excellent, though sporadic and frenetic baker. 

Immediately before I started working at the History Centre I had two jobs, one of which was packaging Yorkshire puddings at the Aunt Bessies factory on Freightliner Road and the other was working as a barista at Hangout, a small bakery and cafe on High Street. I was not really trusted to do any baking in my first year of working there—I was barely trusted to make coffees—but I did get to observe some very talented bakers making some very tasty food: fresh bread, blondies and brownies, cakes, pasties, and the like. Over time I was gradually given a few more baking responsibilities, but I left that job after being moved to a location in the newly refurbished House of Hammonds, which had none of the charms of the little bakery on High Street.

Some years ago, I must have gotten it into my head that baking is overly difficult or not worth the effort, especially when you can buy tasty ready-made baked goods from most decent shops. I won’t pretend that baking is easy, though it really can be sometimes, but it is definitely rewarding and the food is generally so much nicer than anything you can buy in a normal shop for a reasonable price.

Since I started working at the History Centre and long before we brought History Bakers back, a number of staff have brought in delicious food for everyone to try, food that they took the time to bake by hand—Kirstie's brownies and Laurel’s cheesy sausage rolls come to mind. I thought this was such a lovely gesture and one that I have not experienced very often in previous workplaces. Now I have it in my head that learning to bake is also learning to give, because it is difficult to imagine somebody baking a whole pie or a loaf of bread just for their own use. I think that in the absence of a commercial incentive, practically everybody would be baking with little more in mind than the idea of creating something nice and sharing it with people they like.

Image: Miss E. Colbridge’s Almond Slice recipe, C DCE/848/9

Almond Slice

I chose to make an Almond Slice, which I found amongst The Records of the Hull (East) Circuit of the Methodist Church under the reference C DCE/848/9—Kingston Wesley Church souvenir recipe book, 1962. I feel slightly guilty about choosing such a recent recipe from a collection that stretches back to 1810, but I wanted to choose something with simple instructions and relatively few ingredients—and which sounded tasty. We have Miss E. Colbridge to thank for this recipe, so on the off chance you can get word to her, please offer our thanks.

Below you will see a list of all the ingredients and a photograph of most of the ingredients—I forgot to include sugar in the photograph but thankfully remembered to add it to the recipe. I used roughly twice the amount of ingredients listed below to make sure there was enough to go around.

Image: Ingredients used in the recipe(minus 
the sugar)

After I had changed the measurements from imperial to metric, I noticed that the pastry needed egg yolk and the filling required egg white, so I separated two eggs and measured out the rest of the ingredients. To the egg yolks, I added the flour and the margarine and then mixed this all together. The result was too powdery for my liking, so I separated a third egg and mixed the yolk into the pastry, which finally gave it a texture I was happy with. I spread the pastry on the bottom of the dish at roughly half an inch of thickness.

Once I had evenly spread out the pastry with the back of a large spoon, I turned the oven to 180 degrees and began making the filling. I added the icing sugar and ground almonds to the egg whites and mixed them all together with a whisk. When I was happy with the consistency of this mixture, I set it aside and spread a thin layer of raspberry jam over the pastry using a tablespoon. Next, I slowly poured the filling on top and tilted the dish gently from side to side like one of those handheld marble maze games.

 

With the filling evenly spread out, it was time for the final touch, split almonds. My interpretation of split almonds was to chop a bunch of whole almonds up into roughly three pieces per almond and liberally sprinkle the results over the dish. This ultimately made it quite crunchy and difficult to slice up. My partner suggested that what was meant by split almonds is what she calls ‘flaked almonds,’ she also suggested toasting the almonds before I use them as a topping next time. 

Image: Ready to bake ingredients.

I put the result into the oven for 30 minutes, and after checking it over, decided it could do with another 10 minutes. 

Image: The finished Almond cake ready for slicing.

Reviews

Household:

Dilara – “That was nice. Gooey and crunchy, good combo.”

Gemma – “Nice and gooey and the almonds on top add a nice crunch.”

Sofya – “These are really good. Crunchy but also gooey.”

Staff:

Sarah – “Nicely almond-y with just enough jam. Lovely!”

Laurel – “Lovely – would make myself. Sweet, tasty + almond-y.”

Kyle – “Very tasty, the chopped almonds are a little too chunky for me but the raspberry jam is very nice.”

Caoimhe – “Delicious! Right ratio of jam to almonds.”

Nick – “Very tasty.”

Graham – “Very tasty, moist, recommended! Reminds me of my youth 😊”

I must admit I was surprised by how well it came out and how well it was received as I have not baked anything from scratch for a long time. The flavour reminded me of an old-school raspberry jam tart with almond flavourings. I plan to make it again as it was relatively simple and very tasty, and because I can’t think of what else to do with the rest of the ground almonds.

History Bakers: Scotch Crumpets (The Great British Bake Off - Week 3 - Bread)  

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off this year, staff at the History Centre have decided to gather historic recipes and try them out. With bread week a few weeks ago, here is a recipe for Scotch Crumpets. Is it a crumpet or Pancake?

Image: C DCT/1716/2 page 11

Finding a suitable bread recipe proved a lot harder than I had first anticipated. A great deal of the historical recipes are sweet, with only a few sources breaking out into the savoury baking/cooking world. I finally settled on ‘Scotch Crumpets’ as I had always wanted to give crumpets a go and thought this to be the perfect opportunity. Full disclosure, they are definitely more of a pancake than a crumpet, but they are still very yummy, quick and easy. This recipe comes from C DCT/1716/2 – Anlaby Road Methodist Church recipe book.

Ingredients:

2 Teacups full of flour

1 tsp butter

1 tsp golden syrup

½ tsp salt

½ teacupful of sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 egg

½ pint of milk (I used buttermilk as the recipe suggested sour or buttermilk if possible)

Method: 

This is probably the easiest pancake recipe I have tried. Minimal measuring, put it all into a bowl, mix it all up and it’s good to go. The most difficult part of the recipe was deciding on the size of teacup to use to measure the flour and sugar. In the end I settled on a medium teacup, which yielded around 25 – 30 small pancakes in total. 

After combining all of the ingredients and giving it a quick stir I was ready to make the crumpets/pancakes. 

As with any pancake recipe, the first one you cook is always the practice one, and these scotch crumpets were no exception. I dreadfully burnt the first batch trying to gauge how long to cook them for before turning, as there were no clear instructions within the recipe other than ‘turn once’. I decided to go with the basic rule of thumb and turn when small bubbles show on the surface of the pancake. This proved too long for the level of heat, so I ended up with black and charred little rounds. 

Image: First attempt!

On my second go I was more measured in my approach. I turned down the heat and cooked them slower, making sure I watched them. This batch turned our perfect and proved to be light and airy little sweet rounds of pancake. 

The recipe states using a teaspoon measure of mixture for each little pancake and this worked well, although they are quite time consuming as I had to do them in about 5 batches to cook all of the mixture. 

In the end they turned out rather well, the staff at the History Centre enjoyed them also. This is now my go to pancake recipe and I will be making them again. If you decide to give them a try, try toasting them in the toaster to make them a little crispy. 

Image: The finished pancakes/crumpets

Comments:

‘Perfectly fluffy scotch pancakes! Yum’ – Joey

‘Tastes divine – I would say fluffy scone!’ – Caoimhe

‘Delicious, lovely and soft’ – Debbie

‘Really delicious sweet flavour and so soft, definitely more of a pancake but a delightful one! Could eat the whole bag’ – Rachel

‘Delightful little pancake, perfect texture and sweetness for me’- Sol

‘Nice and cakey, tastes great’ - Kyle

History Bakers: Making Bread With Rice (The Great British Bake Off - Week 3 - Bread)

 History Bakers: Making Bread With Rice (The Great British Bake Off - Week 3 - Bread)  

To tie in with the Great British Bake Off this year, staff at the History Centre have decided to gather historic recipes and try them out. With bread week just gone, I decided to make bread using rice with a recipe from 1800 that I found in the Papers of the Pennington Family of Warter (U DDWA).

Image: Recipe for Rice Bread. Ref: U DDWA

I had not heard of the Pennington family before I found this recipe; the biography section at the beginning of our catalogue for U DDWA shows their influence over the years, some of their connections with other members of the landed aristocracy, and several important positions they have held over the years. «Coll_RefNo»

Image: Ingredients

This recipe intrigued me a lot and it looked relatively simple as far as instructions and ingredients go, which you can see below. However, I found it quite difficult overall.
I began by converting the measurements from imperial to metric and saw that the original ratio of flour to rice was roughly one part rice for 5.3 recurring parts flour. I found this ratio made a dry dough and a drier bread—but one which has paired fine with some of my favourite liquids: curry, gravy, and melted butter. I doubled the amount of rice for my second attempt but still found this far too dry. You can see a side-by-side comparison of those breads below, looking more like ancient rocks or anaemic coprolites than anything edible.

Image: First attempts

For the third attempt, I used a lot more rice as this was the only moist ingredient. Both the dough and the baked bread came out a lot nicer, but I would probably use even more rice if I were to try again, as it still came out drier than I would like. You can see two of the doughs together below, note how much cleaner the bowl is with the high-rice mixture dough.

Image: Smoother bread mixture 

The ingredients I used to produce the final attempt were: 450g flour, 300g rice, a tbsp of yeast, and three pinches of salt. Overall, I found this dough relatively easy to mix, far easier than the dryer doughs I had made previously. Rolling out the dough was its own ordeal, however, as it proved to be very sticky. Not only did it cling to the rolling pin, but it immediately incorporated most of the flour I put down to help roll it. The fissures you can see above were commonplace whenever I rolled it too far in one direction and a short period of rolling was generally followed by a longer period of consolidation. When I was satisfied enough with the dough blocks, I put them in the oven at 190 degrees Celsius for roughly 30-40 minutes.

Image: Pre-oven mixture

I did not get a picture of the final batch of bread as, by this point, I was very hungry and part-way through making a curry. I did, however, get a picture of the slices I fed to the people in my house. They look quite a lot like bread, especially if you squint. 

Image: Finished product, baked and sliced

Dilara – “Surprisingly nice.” Joey – “It was nice, I think it could have done with longer in the oven.” Sofya – “Weird bread is good. It reminds me of Palestinians having to make bread using any old s***e.” I brought the third loaf into work for people to try and they had the following to say: Lucy – “Definitely quite heavy, but really nice flavour! It’s a little bit sweet in the same way as white bread. Really surprised it was made with rice!” Rachel - “Quite dense and stodgy but nice flavour & definitely enjoyable enough toasted with some good butter.” Overall, this recipe did not go very well, and it is difficult to pinpoint exactly why. Some of the instructions weren’t particularly clear and I had no idea what it was meant to look like at any stage of the process. I was half expecting to create a light and fluffy bao bun but instead I ended up with a dense and heavy loaf. On the plus side, it tasted fine to the people brave enough to try it and it is sure to be a lot healthier than many breads because it was made with boiled rice instead of butter. I may try to make this again in future as it was relatively simple, but I would probably try to find a different recipe or at least use ratios like those for the third loaf. The imprecision of the instructions left me with a few questions about where I had gone wrong. Did I cook the rice for the correct amount of time? Is it assumed that I should add water to get the right consistency of dough? Did I have the oven at the correct temperature? Is/was the original texture desirable even though it did not appeal to me personally?

History Bakers: Hotham Estate Shortbread Recipe (The Great British Bake Off – Week 2 – Biscuits)

History Bakers: Hotham Estate Shortbread Recipe (The Great British Bake Off – Week 2 – Biscuits)

I am currently going through our old blogs to make sure they are saved for posterity, and in doing so, I have seen a great many fascinating initiatives undertaken by the History Centre, my favourite of which was admittedly Hullcraft—whereby a dedicated Minecraft server was set up for people to build recreations of the Hull History Centre alongside a series of famous local buildings. This was done in 2014-15 to promote a new collection relating to the firm Francis Johnson and Partners, Architects (U DFJ).

Another initiative that caught my eye was History Bakers. After I had chatted to a few members of staff about it, we decided that it would be simple enough and popular enough to bring back. When colleagues mentioned that the Great British Bake off was returning in September, it seemed like the best possible time.

The original History Bakers blogs ran from 9th March 2015 until 22nd December 2016. 19 dishes were made by 11 members of staff and Verity Minniti has the distinction of making both the first and last dishes of that run.

As a result of our reintroduction of History Bakers, the History Centre team has raised £200 for famine relief for the Sameer Project (www.chuffed.org).

Biscuit recipes seemed to be popular amongst the staff and we have already had one blog on them, so here is another (with more to come). 

The first day of ‘official’ Biscuit Week at the Hull History Centre proved to be very busy as 9th September was the date for this month’s lunchtime talk. The talk was ‘Sister Agnes Walsh: Hull-born Hero of the Holocaust’ and it was delivered by her great-nephew Ian Judson. Sister Agnes was a nun who saved a Jewish family named Cremieux by hiding them from the Nazis at the St Vincent de Paul convent in Cadouin, southwest France. Alain Cremieux, who was seven years old at the time, attended the talk in person. Judson has also written a book on the subject ‘Auntie Ada: The Unlikeliest Hero of the Holocaust.’

In addition to having the chance to share in this fascinating piece of local history, September 9th was also the date of a visitation by several important figures from The National Archives, who came to award the Hull History Centre with its Accreditation Certificate:

Saul Nassé - Chief Executive and Keeper of The National Archives

Liz Harper – Sector Development Manager for Yorkshire and the North-East

David Morris – Head of Regional and Networks Team

According to the infallible Wikipedia, Saul Nassé had a previous role as Controller of BBC Learning in 2010 and the first series of the Great British Bake Off was aired in August that year. I thought it would be fun to offer up some freshly baked goods to our visitors and involve them in the History Bakers project. I did not want to pile the pressure onto one person to bake for all the staff at the History Centre and our guests for the day, so I asked everyone who was able to if they could bake something for this week. Laurel made some delicious ginger fairlings and Sophie created a tasty biscuit with a pear jam centre. I made some shortbread and Claire brought in a lovely caraway seed cake that she did not have the chance to bake in time for cake week.

Image: From left to right: Saul Nassé, Martin Taylor,
Laurel Edwards, Claire Weatherall, and David Morris.
Our guests from TNA were enjoying some sugar
jumbles with pear jam, courtesy of Sophie and Kyle.

Shortbread – U DDHO/19/8

I felt slightly guilty for choosing a recipe from 1962 for my first attempt, which you shall have to wait for pastry week to learn more about. To make up for this, I went back another century to try out this shortbread recipe I found in the Hotham Family Papers, it is dated c.1860. I also chose this recipe because it had three ingredients and relatively few instructions which suited my last-minute decision to bake something this week.

The first thing I did was attempt to transcribe the recipe and change the measurements from imperial to metric. Below is a scan of the recipe along with my transcription and a photograph of the ingredients I used:

2 lbs of flour (907g) 

1lb of good butter (454g) 

0.5 lbs of finest raw sugar (227g) 

 Rub the whole together until it becomes dough + then roll it out the size you wish the cake which is usually from half to three quarters of an inch in thickness. 

Bake it in an oven about the heat that would do for bread not hotter as it easily burns from being [so wet]. Add if liked sugar + plums + candied [citron] or orange.

Image: Recipe, U DDHO/19/8

This recipe is quite specific about using “good” butter and the “finest raw sugar.” Because there were only three ingredients, I knew I had to take these adjectives seriously. I know what good butter is, but I had never thought about a particular brand of sugar being better than any other. I went to my local shop and said to the person at the counter, “Please can you help me? I am baking some shortbread and I require only the finest raw sugar.” I don’t believe in fate or higher powers, but something must have been working in my favour because the finest raw sugar just happened to be the only brand they had in the shop at that time! What are the odds? 

Once I had measured out the ingredients, I put them all in my biggest mixing bowl and felt a moment of dread as it was over four fifths full. I would recommend reducing the overall amount of ingredients the first time you attempt this recipe.

For at least the next forty-five minutes I carefully and laboriously mixed the three ingredients together with a silicon spoon until they finally began to resemble dough. As I stood there, mixing and dissociating, my thoughts turned to a documentary I had once watched featuring the indigenous Mawé people of Amazonas, Brazil. The Mawé ritual for initiation as a warrior involves wearing a glove filled with bullet ants for 10 whole minutes, they do this repeatedly over weeks or months. Just as I began to feel like I was practising for such a ritual, I looked down at my fresh dough and felt a keen sense of achievement.

Image: The mixed ingredients

I turned the oven to 190 degrees Celsius and split the dough into two parts, which I rolled out into squares with a rolling pin. The first square was roughly half-an-inch to three-quarters of an inch tall and I left it in the oven for around 35-40 minutes. When I took it out of the oven, it was a little more brittle than I would have liked, so I made the next batch roughly an inch tall and cooked it for around 45 minutes. Unfortunately, it came out ever-so-slightly soft in the middle, but it tasted just fine.

The recipe itself was great, but with hindsight I should have been more precise when measuring the height of the uncooked dough squares. I finished most of the shortbread with a dusting of sugar and it was ready to serve.

Image: The finished shortbread

I fed the finished shortbread to the people in my house, eliciting these reactions:

Dilara - “That’s tasty. The mix is brilliant, not too sweet.”

Joey - “Delicious, but a bit too thick.”

Sofya - “Nice, but too thick and so a little undercooked in the middle.”

Then I brought my shortbread into work where people said the following:

Pete – “Possibly the best short bread I have ever had – a more robust density than the usual type, and a little more savoury. Both these qualities recommend it to my palate – I had two helpings and enjoyed both a great deal.”

Sarah – “Yummy!”

Caoimhe – “Melts in mouth.”

Rachel – “Beautiful texture, crunchy and melty at the same time and a good thick slab!”

Lucy – Delicious! Very light & tasty, and not overpoweringly sweet!”

Kyle – “Tastes like shortbread,  not overly crumbly which is nice.”

Laurel – “Nice shortbread, not overly sweet.”