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  • Ah, season's greetings.

  • As we're in the middle of the festive season, things are a little busy with all the entertaining.

  • I like to have a few things in the store cover that I can turn into dishes for dinner to make life a little easier.

  • Should there be unexpected guests.

  • Today, I'm making Gertrude Allah Clem from one of my favorite recipe books, written by Eliza Acton.

  • For this recipe, you will need s slightly stale sponge cake, eggs, sugar cream, a selection of preserves, crystallized fruit and flowers, Armand paste and food coloring.

  • This recipe is one of many I have for using up stale sponge cakes.

  • I always make a second sponge cake.

  • Whenever I make one, I'm going to slice the cake horizontally with equal slices.

  • And then, for each slice, I'll just cut out the center, then spread different colored jams over each slice.

  • It's an ideal way of using up some of the half jars in the back of the cupboard.

  • I have blackberry, lime and lemon, strawberry and apricot, and then once I've spread them, I'll stack it back up again.

  • This time of year is really very busy, and there's only four of us.

  • So we have to be more organized than usual.

  • After all, we don't just make breakfast, luncheon, dinner and supper for Lord and Lady Bre Brick and their guests.

  • But also four meals for just under 30.

  • Indoor servants and the upper servants and the lower servants have different meals.

  • Okay.

  • I'll keep these bits, perhaps for a trifle.

  • Mhm.

  • Okay.

  • Mhm.

  • Mm.

  • Yeah, yeah.

  • Mm.

  • Mhm.

  • Yeah, Yeah.

  • Mhm.

  • Mhm.

  • Okay.

  • We often buy confectionery and fancy cakes and such, like, in, we rarely bake our own bread.

  • And there are several women locally that I used to do the rougher work leaving my maids to work here in the kitchen.

  • Yeah.

  • Mm hmm.

  • Yeah, Yeah.

  • Mhm.

  • Mhm.

  • Yeah.

  • Mhm.

  • Mm.

  • And now I'm going to cover the whole thing in icing the way.

  • This is quite an old fashioned way to ice a cake.

  • It's not quite royal izing and not quite meringue.

  • I'm going to whisk my egg whites until they're stiff and then add some sugar.

  • Yeah, yeah.

  • Mhm.

  • Mhm.

  • Yeah, Yeah.

  • I'm now going to ice my cake.

  • This cake has a curious name, Gertrude.

  • I think it was probably supposed to be Gerland, which means Garland in French.

  • I understand Eliza Acton spent some time in France, but she calls it Gertrude.

  • And so shall I.

  • Uh huh.

  • Mhm.

  • Mhm.

  • Mhm.

  • Mhm.

  • Now you don't need to worry too much about your ice in.

  • You can cover up mistakes by adding some decoration.

  • I'm now going to put the cake into a very slow oven to let it dry out.

  • I've already started decorating my cake using some candied fruit.

  • But while it Mr Ryan, I made some leaf shapes out of some Armand paste, which I mixed with food coloring and then rolled it out and used my cutters.

  • You can get many different shapes of cutters nowadays.

  • I'm going to stick the shapes on using some royal icing.

  • Synthetic food coloring is like this have been around for about 10 years now.

  • I think they come from the coal industry.

  • They were even some when I was training.

  • I remember us being very excited when move arrived.

  • I still insist that the girls learn how to make food coloring in the old traditional way the spinach for green carrots for orange, but they aren't as good.

  • They're a bit watery.

  • and leave a taste.

  • Mhm.

  • Mm hmm.

  • Mhm.

  • Yeah.

  • And now all I need to do is to fill the center.

  • I'm filling the center of the cake or garland with whipped cream.

  • You must make sure you get right down to the bottom.

  • And I'm going to finish the decoration with some sugar flowers and some more leaves.

  • There you are, Gertrude.

  • L.

  • A.

  • Claim.

  • Happy Christmas.

  • Yeah, yeah.

  • Uh huh.

  • Okay, right.

  • Mhm, no.

Ah, season's greetings.

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