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January 2024 January 2024
BERE REGIS HISTORY SOCIETY

Bere Regis Recipe Book - Some Cakes
At the November meeting of the History society, Alison Lynam
and I baked some of the book’s cakes. It’s a bit like an
exercise in “Bake off”. You have to put it together and
improvise. Alison laughed when I gave her a recipe for the
“Very fine Cake”.
It has half a glass of Brandy
among the ingredients. You
could certainly taste the brandy so perhaps the
cake is well named. Alison tells me that mace
was not easy to find in the shops so grated
nutmeg was substituted. Bitter almonds were
found to be impossible to get. They are banned
from sale in Europe, as the nuts when
consumed, are converted into Cyanide by the
digestive processes in your body. The
quantities are quite large and when all mixed
together this cake needed a large tin. No
instructions for the size of the tin or for cooking it.
Alison says, she used an 8 inch tin but should
have used 9 to 10 inch tin. This would have
reduced cooking time. The cake took 2 ½ hours at a 160 oven. She used half
the brandy to soak the fruit and painted the rest on afterwards. When making
the almond paste/icing she worked it with fingers and not a fork (as in recipe).
When iced with the almond icing it looked a little like a very large Simnel cake
Recipe as it appears in book with the details as from where it was sent.
From Cork at South bank
‘A very fine cake’
¾ lb flour
¾ lb butter
¾ lb sugar
¼ lb Mixed candied peel
A little ground mace and
cinnamon
2 oz sweet almonds
A very few bitter ones
Two eggs
1 lb currants
Half a wine glassful of brandy

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