welcome friends welcome to Sunday morning in our old cook book series
we're going to do yet another recipe out of this five roses flour cookbook and
this time around we're going to do something called a Yorkshire Spice Cake
now it is in the Christmas cake section and I have never come across this cake
before so I'm interested to find out how it works out one of the interesting
things about this Yorkshire spice cake is that it only has one spice in it and
that is nutmeg so it'll be interesting to see what the flavour is with only one
spice first off I've got some lard pure pork lard that I've put in here and I'm
gonna cream it until it's light and fluffy the recipe says shortening but I
know in this time period that pork lard and shortening the terms were used
interchangeably and that you would have found more pork lard pure pork lard on
the shelves than vegetable shortening and certainly at a better price point
anyway so as that's creaming together I'm gonna work with a little bit of the
other ingredients I'm gonna get a couple of bowls here so
the first thing I'm gonna do is take these currents and put them in here
along with some raisins now if you're wondering what currants are they're not
black currants that's something completely different or red currants
completely different in the context of what we're talking about here currants
are very specific type of raisin made from the Corinthian grape so no relation
to those other fruits and I'm just going to take a little bit of the flour and
I'm gonna put it on top and we're gonna mix that in to coat the currants and the
raisins before we put them into the batter which leaves me with the flour
and I'm gonna put the flour in here and we're just going to mix it together with
salt baking powder and we will grate in the nutmeg and this recipe calls for a
lot of nutmeg three-quarters of a nutmeg okay now this looks pretty good so I'm
gonna put in the brown sugar and when you've got one of these even if you have
the one like I do with the rubber spatula that's supposed
to scrape the side you should always scrape the sides down anyway just to
make sure that everything is mixed together so in goes the brown sugar and
we're going to continue to cream this together
until it's fully incorporated
okay now the eggs go in one at a time and you put them in you make sure
they're fully incorporated before you put the next one in okay now we
alternate between wet and dry ingredients into the mixture so the
flour ingredients and the milk and just spoon some of the flour in a little bit
at a time you don't do it too quickly don't put too much in if this takes I
don't know five six additions just go slow there's quite a bit of
flour here that we need to get in and there's quite a bit of milk as well
and then just a little bit of milk not too much because it'll splash and you
don't want the batter to get too loose
now we mix in the raisins and the currants I'm just gonna pop these in and
you don't want to mix the cake too far at this point to over mix it that can
lead to problems so just like all of the recipes from this time period there's no
mention of what size pan to use so I'm just gonna take a chance with this
larger pan because there's quite a bit of batter here and I may not have made
the right choice now that I've got it in here let's see nope
the smaller nine by nine is the way to go so I'm gonna make a change okay nine
by nine now the recipe says to put in half of the batter spread it out and
then add the chopped peel so there we go
sprinkle on the chopped peel
then putting the rest of the batter
spread it out as best you can and then put on the last of the peel and into the
oven
so Glenn I have already cut into this gorgeous looking cake check that out
look at all that fruit so this is a Yorkshire spiced cake of which I have no
you know when I started making this I had no idea because often when I start
these recipes I just pick one don't do any research and I just make it the way
that the recipe says yes so I did a little bit of research while it was
baking Yorkshire spice cake seems to be an early version of Christmas cake okay
like a Christmas fruitcake the earliest versions that I could find we're
essentially the same as this with only one spice which is nutmeg but instead of
using baking powder they used yeast for leavening because you know we're talking
early 1800s mm-hmm later versions used butter and a larger array of spices it's
a very simple very tasty cake mm-hmm so for people that don't like Christmas
cake this is a much lighter tasting yeah it doesn't have that heavy feel or rich
mmm-hmm I don't think rich is right with there something with the fruit mixture
in by the time we put in those three or the rum or whatever I can eat like this
much and it's like okay I'm that's it I'm yeah no this is this is nice and
light I mean there's a lot of fruit in here the currants definitely weigh in a
lot of flavor now later cakes of this name have cinnamon in them mmm or what
is it the English call it spice mix sort of a nondescript spice mix yeah but this
distinct you know every one is a slightly different version there's the
anything like that everyone has a slightly different version it's like
when you make a pumpkin pie everybody's a little bit different some people will
do just nutmeg just allspice so you could sub butter for the lard because
later versions of this cake do use butter or a mixture of butter and lard
you could put in brandy or rum if you wanted to but you don't have
I mean this cake is perfect just the way it is I think and it's it is the kind of
cake that you could easily freeze and have when guests just turn a short
period of time yes so this cake shows up in later versions of the five roses
cookbooks Same Same Same Same until the mid-50s and then it disappears after the
mid-50s it disappears but it's not in the nineteen fifteen version but when I
was looking through the nineteen fifteen version I found the next recipe which is
called Yorkshire Parkin Harkin Parkin okay I've never heard of that either but
I guess I guess in Canada in the early years there were a lot of people from
Yorkshire so give this one a try thanks for stopping by see you again soon
you