Recipe 60

Name:

Recipe name and category: Beggar’s Cake-Dessert (here is one recipe

you won’t believe)

No. of servings:

Preparation time:

Recipe ingredients and directions:

2 lbs butter

40 eggs

2 lbs sugar

grated rind of 10 lemons

2 lbs potato flour

3 cups sweet cream

Beat butter to a pulp. Add one yolk at a time, alternating with a tablespoon of sugar until the mixture has been beaten for one hour. Beat the egg whites stiff and add by tablespoon, alternating with a tablespoon of flour. Add the grated lemon rind and finally the cream.

This cake is baked barbecue style. Get an oak wood rod the size of a rolling pin, about 16 inches high, wider at the bottom, narrow at the top. The rod should have a hole in it wide enough to make it fit on a spit. Wrap rod with well buttered paper and tie securely with string. Support ends of rod with tripods. Place tray under rod for dripping butter.

Bake before a blazing fireplace or a gas fire grate. Heat the rod to a high temperature. One person then turns the rod while another pours on batter with a soup ladle. When first layer begins to brown pour another layer and so on until all the batter is used. The last layer should be baked most thoroughly. Add the batter from dripping tray. Cool cake for six hours on the rod. Cover the cake unevenly with sucre (I’m not sure of the spelling for this word; the word could also be lucre). Slice from the top.

Sucre

½ lb sugar in cubes

½ cup water

Cook until thick and forms thread when blown. Stir in one direction until a thick mass appears. For flavor use lemon juice, orange juice, strong black coffee, barberry juice or pineapple juice.

Recipe source: After my mother, who was Noor’s great grandmother, passed away at the age of 93, I was going through some of her cook books and found this. It is not a French recipe and probably no one will ever make it but I thought it was interesting to read. It is a Polish recipe from Emily Korenkiewicz.

Recipe anecdote: Baking of this cake is not a difficult as it sounds. It is delicious and keeps for a long time. In Poland 60 and 100 eggs are used in the recipe with other ingredients in proportion. This is a precious old recipe. Good luck.