Halloween is approaching! Animatronic witches and zombies are appearing in various people's yards. A few people have already bedecked their houses with orange Christmas lights. However, no one is putting out ornamental porch pumpkins because it is still too hot out. Pumpkins may last half a year if you just put them in the back of a closet, but they wouldn't survive a week in the Texas sun. Therefore, we are making more oven-free delights!
We previously made a variation of today's recipe from the Dormeyer cookbook (which, like my great-grandmother, came from Chicago. Is this a local dish?). Today's version has a few extra steps, and I was curious if it'd be better or if you can't taste the extra fuss.
| Lemon Sponge 1 (¼-oz) envelope unflavored gelatin ¼ cup cold water 1 cup boiling water ¾ cup sugar ¼ cup lemon juice (for me, it was 2 small lemons) 2 egg whites (save the yolks for the custard) ¼ cup whipping cream Custard (see below) Maraschino cherries for garnish Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water. Let stand for about 10 minutes. Then add the boiling water, sugar, and lemon juice. Stir until the sugar is dissolved. Let cool in the refrigerator until almost completely set, stirring occasionally. (You can speed this up by putting the bowl of gelatin in a larger bowl of ice water and stirring for a few minutes.) With an electric mixer, beat the gelatin until frothy. Then, with fresh beaters (or just rinse the beaters real quick), beat the egg whites to soft peaks. Fold them into the gelatin. Lastly, whip and fold in the cream. Refrigerate overnight. Serve with custard on top, garnished with cherries. Custard: 2 egg yolks ½ cup milk 4 tsp sugar ½ tsp vanilla (or more if desired) Whisk together in the top of a double boiler, beating well. The sugar won't completely dissolve until it gets hot, so don't worry about the persistent grains at the bottom of the pot. Put over boiling water and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened. After the sugar has dissolved, taste and see if you want to add more of it. Remove from heat, transfer to a small container, and cover with plastic wrap. Press the wrap onto the surface of the custard, making contact (this prevents a skin from forming). Let cool for a few minutes, then add the vanilla. Refrigerate. Note: If raw egg whites are a concern for you, use pasteurized-in-the-shell eggs.
- Hannah O'Brien
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To make this recipe for a large number of people, use the following amounts:
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Apparently they really liked lemon sponge at my great-grandmother's house. She rewrote the ingredients in triple quantity under the heading "For large number to be served." And if they didn't like lemon sponge by the platterful, then it must have been one of her go-to recipes when she needed to come up with dessert for 20 with minimal effort.
Based on various papers I've looked through, "H. O'Brien" was my great-grandmother's cousin. Come to think of it, I've never swapped a recipe with any of my cousins, so it's interesting to see my great-grandmother did at least once.
Our lemon sponge begins with the foundation of so many things: gelatin!
I never really got involved with gelatin before I started going through this binder. My most ambitious creation was canned peaches suspended in red Jello. Given my current progress, I may find myself attempting multiple layers if I don't have a sudden attack of sanity.
Just look at that crystalline loveliness in the mixing bowl!
After adding the lemon juice and boiling water, it looked like an innocent bowl of clear water and tasted like lemonade. A part of me I'm not quite comfortable with asked "why didn't I just use a box of lemon jello?" And indeed, given the path of American food history and the massive infusion of pre-canned and pre-packaged foods in the 1950s (all those canneries and factories didn't want to go out of business just because "our brave boys" had come home from fighting Hitler) this recipe may have later evolved to lemon Jello and Cool Whip.
We put the, um, fortified lemonade aside to chill while making the "soft boiled custard." Since we don't get any instructions, I cracked open my favorite cookbook of the moment, Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book. It's accidentally period-correct and location-appropriate, but I actually picked this book because I've liked every recipe I've made but one. To my surprise, Mrs. Mary Martensen does not provide a plain custard recipe, though I did find a custard sauce. I think a custard sauce is meant to be runnier than a custard?
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| Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933 |
Anyway, Mrs. Martensen doesn't use a lot of sugar in this recipe. I first thought I should change that, but then I realized we're pouring this onto a sweet dessert. Besides, I could always stick a tasting spoon into the double boiler and see if our sauce needed a little help.
The custard takes us to the only part of the recipe that heated the kitchen (assuming you boiled your gelatin water in the microwave): standing over a steaming double boiler for a few minutes. I have to admit that I doubted Mrs. Mary Martensen as the custard came to a close. Sure, it passed the finger-swipe test on a spoon, but it still seemed very thin and runny.
Setting aside our custard, it was time to beat our gelatin until frothy. I've never tried to make gelatin pretend to be whipped cream, but I kept an open mind. It turned into a foam, though it melted in the process. (Remember the room-temperature air that ruined our prune whip?) I re-refrigerated our gelatin and then beat it again to hopefully firm it up and make sure the bubbles wouldn't slowly break.
Now, we fold white into white!
Lastly, we add a surprisingly small amount of whipped cream. I couldn't help thinking over and over that this recipe is a lot of white mixed into white. Or if you prefer to get a bit sociological, it's a big fluffy cloud of showing off that you own an eggbeater and an icebox.
As I was double-checking the recipe, I noticed a helpful hint on the other side of the page:
Since I always like to make recipes exactly as written, I refrigerated our first custard and made another. This involved cracking out another two egg yolks, but I figured I would find a use for the whites soon enough. Besides, extra custard has never made a day worse.
After everything had spent the night in the refrigerator later, it was time to serve our hopefully delicious lemon sponge. It turned out I didn't fold in the cream quite as well as I thought. But I think I could get away with calling it visible strata instead of ineptitude.
So, as far as topping our sponge, Mrs. Mary Martensen's custard slid right off. I didn't mind with this recipe because that meant we had a lovely moat of custard at the bottom of the bowl. But it's nice to know in advance that I shouldn't use this recipe for any attempt at aesthetic drizzle.
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| Yes, I bought cherries just to put on top of this. |
The other sauce, made to my great-grandmother's cousin's specifications, did a little better.
I liked this recipe a lot more than I expected to. It's light and airy, which makes it great in the summertime. (And since summer keeps getting longer and longer...) The custard gave it just enough substance without turning it into something rich and heavy. And the whole creation had just the right amount of lemony flavor to make it refreshing.
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