How to Make Gertrude à la Crème – The Victorian Way

[Laughter] [Music] ah seasons 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 cupboard that i can turn into dishes for dinner to make life a little easier should there be unexpected guests today i'm making gertrude alacreme from one of my favorite recipe books written by eliza acton for this recipe you will need slightly stale sponge cake eggs sugar cream a selection of preserves [Music] crystallized fruit and flowers almond paste and food coloring [Music] 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 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 lady braybrook and their guests but also four meals for just under 30 indoor servants and the upper servants and the lower servants have different meals [Music] i'll keep these bits perhaps for a trifle so [Music] [Music] [Music] we often buy confectionery and fancy cakes and such like in and we rarely bake our own bread there are several women locally that i use to do the rougher work leaving my maids to work here in the kitchen [Music] so [Music] and now i'm going to cover the whole thing in icing [Music] this is quite an old-fashioned way to not iso cake it's not quite royal icing and not quite meringue i'm going to whisk my egg whites until they're stiff and then add some sugar [Music] [Music] i'm now going to ice my cake this cake has a curious name gertrude i think it was probably supposed to be gurland which means garland in french i understand eliza acton spent some time in france but she calls it gertrude and so shall i [Music] do [Music] now you don't need to worry too much about your icing 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 [Music] i've already started decorating my cake using some candied fruit but while it was drying i made some leaf shapes out of some almond 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 colorings like this have been around for about 10 years now i think they come from the coal industry there 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 colouring 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 [Music] and now all i need to do is to fill the center [Music] 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 sugared flowers and some more leaves [Music] there you are gertrude alecrem happy christmas [Music] [Music] [Applause] do [Music] you

Channel: English Heritage

Views: 797,797

Keywords: English Heritage, history, mrs crocombe, victorian way, audley end house, cookery, cooking, baking, historical cooking

Id: NIU_3-0IHpU

Length: 12min 46sec (766 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 13 2021