Here at Entangled, we like to read.
(Bet you would never have guessed that.)
So we also love quick-n-easy recipes that free up more time for us to indulge in our favorite past time.
Each week we’re sharing some of our favorite recipes to help you find a few extra minutes in your day to enjoy your next favorite book!
This week a special guest:
“Cyvele”, or Almond Cakes with Elizabeth Keysian
Who tried it: Elizabeth Keysian, author of Distracting the Duke
Why she likes it:
Many years ago, I used to masquerade as a Tudor kitchen wench. I worked in a genuine manor house, cooking meals for the gentry, to both educate and entertain hordes of schoolchildren and adult visitors.
It was enormous fun, and shaped the rest of my life, to some extent.
As a source book I used “Pleyn Delit- Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks”. This wonderful book simplifies the medieval recipes, and gives quantities and cooking times—which the original recipes don’t.
Today I’m going to share with you the recipe for “Cyvele”, or Almond Cakes.
Ingredients
1 cup breadcrumbs
4oz ground almonds
Half cup plus 2 tbsp sugar
Half tsp salt
2 eggs
Oil and/or fat for frying
First, make your breadcrumbs. In the Tudor kitchen, we rubbed stale bread through a wire sieve to make these. But if you let the bread get too hard, you’ll have to use a food processor (or if you want to be authentic and make it difficult for yourself, a pestle and mortar.)
In a bowl, add the ground almonds to the breadcrumbs. You can buy ground almonds but again, if you want to be authentic, grind your own almonds. But first you must blanch them to remove the skins, and dry them out before grinding.
Here’s a picture of me cheating by using a blender.
I hope you like the apron. I made it when I was putting on an exhibition about the Magna Carta at the local museum!
Then add the other dry ingredients (except the two tbsps sugar) and beaten eggs and mix together to form a thick batter.
I prefer to shallow fry my almond cakes, so if you do the same you’ll need to flatten them with the back of a spoon when you put them in the hot oil, and turn them once to cook the other side.
Drain on paper and sprinkle with the reserved sugar. They are delicious served warm, but perfectly fine cold. To use a very non-medieval expression- YUM!
Pick up Distracting the Duke by Elizabeth Keysian for just 99¢!
He’s the last thing she wants. She’s the last thing he needs.
Devonshire, England, 1820
Determined to avoid the strife-filled marriage of his parents, Marcus, the Duke of Ulvercombe, wants an amenable, biddable wife, and has set his cap for a certain pretty miss. Unfortunately, her vastly opinionated, frustrating, and lamentably beautiful guardian, Lady Clara Tinniswood, keeps distracting him, tempting him to consider a far more tempestuous—and passionate—union.
Recently widowed Lady Clara Tinniswood wants only to organize a quiet new life for herself, beyond the control of any man. But one shockingly unguarded moment while confronted by Marcus’s gloriously naked body catapults her headlong into a forbidden passion and threatens to undermine all her well-laid plans.
Even if Marcus abandons his sweet ideal and surrenders to his growing desire for Clara, there’s one unalterable issue which could destroy their hopes forever…
Elizabeth Keysian felt destined to write historical romance due to her Cornish descent, and an ancestral connection to the Norse god Odin. Being an only child gave her plenty of time to read, create imaginary worlds, produce her own comics, and write sketches and a deplorably bad musical for an amateur dramatics group.
Three decades spent working in museums and archaeology fired Elizabeth’s urge to write, as did living on a Knights Templar estate, with a garage full of skeletons, a resident ghost and a moat teeming with newts.
Elizabeth lives near Bath in England with her partner and cats. Subscribe to her author newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/cxe369
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