Short cakes

One of Sian's experiments

Original sources

Huswife

Take wheate flower, of the fayrest ye can get, and put it in an earthen pot, and stop it close, and set it in an Oven and bake it, and when it is baken, it will be full of clods, and therefore ye must searse it through a search: the flower will have as long baking as a pastie of Venison. When you have done this, take clowted Creame, or els sweet Butter, but Creame is better, then take Sugar, Cloves, Mace, and Saffron, and the yolke of an Egge for one doozen of Cakes one yolke is ynough: then put all these aforsesaid things together into the cream, + teper the al together, the put the to your flower and so make your Cakes, your paste will be very short, therefore yee must make your Cakes very litle: when yee bake your cakes, ye must bake them upon papers, after the drawing of a batch of bread.
After comparison with various modern recipes, the first experimental batch went like this: Rolled out, this made 16 cakes with my cutter.
Baked at 190° for about 10 minutes, on a greased baking tray. No tendency to stick: the suggestion of using papers may have been to protect them from the debris on the bottom of the bread oven?
Feed-back suggested that slightly less cloves would give wider appeal, and that as a Tudor dish, more sugar would be good. Next time I plan on doubling the sugar content, and pre-baking the (white) flour. If I can get clotted cream rather than thick double, I will.

Three times the quantity:
300g flour, 150g sugar, 3 eggs, 18 fl oz cream ( a pint)

Post-baking note: pre-baking the flour browns it slightly, and alters the texture. Much finer and drier, and the Huswife is right about the Clods. I used ½ tsp cloves, 3 tsp mace, about 2 tsp saffron. Tester says they're better than last time.