Currant Cakes (Old-Fashioned Christmas Drop Cakes)
Submitted by Byron_Tho
Old-fashioned Pennsylvania Christmas drop cakes loaded with currants and lemon. Thin, buttery, crispy-edged holiday cookies made the way they were a hundred years ago. A vintage gem.
YIELD
1 servingsPREP
20 minCOOK
20 minREADY
40 minThese currant cakes are straight out of a Pennsylvania Dutch kitchen, and the recipe reads like something your great-grandmother would have jotted on an index card.
A full pound of butter gets creamed with a pound of sugar, six eggs go in one at a time, then flour and half a pound of currants dusted to keep them from clumping. A whole lemon, juice and rind, brightens everything up.
The trick is pressing them flat on a hot, well-buttered pan so they spread thin and bake into crispy, lacy-edged wafers that shatter when you bite into them.
They’re not dainty little cookies. This is a big batch meant for a holiday cookie tin, the kind you’d wrap up and give to neighbors.
Baker’s Tips
- Press the dough as flat as possible with a butter knife before baking. The thinner they are, the crispier and more addictive the edges become.
- Butter the pans generously. These are thin and sticky, and they’ll fuse to an ungreased surface. Parchment paper works well as a modern alternative.
- Warming the pan slightly before dropping the batter helps the dough spread and melt evenly for uniform thickness.
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the currants with some of the flour.
Work butter and sugar together to a smooth cream, then slowly work in whole eggs one at a time.
Add a little of the flour, rind and juice of the lemon and salt.
Work in slowly the rest of the flour and the currants.
Drop by spoonfuls on large buttered pans, pressing flat with a knife as the cakes are better when very thin.
A good plan is to heat the pan a bit and allow the cakes to melt as much as possible before putting them in the oven to bake.
Be sure to butter the pans thoroughly; otherwise, the thin cakes will be difficult to remove.
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