In September 2021, Lucas joined a LARPing group for homeschoolers. The overarching theme for the year was the Renaissance. He has been loving the group & creating his own little immersive world for live-action-role-playing.
His character's name is Toka and he has an entire, elaborate back story. He is a rags to riches half-elf knight hero. His origin country is known for the green hair all their native people have. So, Lucas has had green hair for months now!
As an end of semester celebration, there was to be a Christmas Feast! Unfortunately, because of the windstorm that knocked out power across much of southern Colorado Springs for a week (5 days for our house!) it was postponed until January 8, 2022. The meal was designed to be a potluck with each family providing a "renaissance style" dish. We chose to bring dessert, so that it would be safe for Vinnie. Ultimately, the fearless leader "Queen Amaterien" asked everyone to make sure their dishes were dairy, egg, and peanut free, so EVERYTHING at the feast was safe for Vinnie!
Initially, I had volunteered to bring cupcakes, but then realized that the dishes were supposed to stay "on theme" and cupcakes wouldn't have existed during the Renaissance. So, I set about doing some internet research.
I came across Layers of Learning's post about Renaissance Small Cakes and knew that would be a good fit for our dessert! I read through the entire post several times and the recipe quite a few more, then began preparing to bake the small cakes. I had to adapt the recipe to fit our dietary needs and available ingredients but the cakes turned out DELICIOUS! We called them "Currant Small Cakes" for the party.
This is the recipe I used:
3 cups flour
¾ cups sugar
about 1.5 cups of raisins
¾ cups olive oil based margarine, room temperature
2 ½ Tbsp. Sweetened Condensed Coconut Milk
1 Bob's Red Mill egg replacer egg
3/4 of an applesauce cup (each cup is 1/4 of a cup of applesauce & I just added some until the mixture had enough liquid)
¼ tsp. nutmeg
4 Tbsp. water
I did have to kind of "eyeball" how things were going as it was VERY dry to start with. I added the applesauce a little at a time as extra egg substitute. I also added a tablespoon or so of water.
When the dough was able to bind together I added in the raisins. I added them 1/2 a cup at a time until the dough seemed like it had WAY too many raisins in it! It turned out to be just enough but I don't think it would have hurt to have added the full 2.5 cups called for in the original recipe.
Steps:
1. Mix flour, sugar and nutmeg in a bowl with a fork.
2. Add in softened or room temperature margarine & stir with a fork. It will be quite dry & lumpy.
3. Prepare the Bob's Red Mill egg replacer egg and sit aside to rest.
4. Stir condensed coconut milk in a bowl to incorporate ingredients. Then measure required amount into another bowl.
5. Add the water to the condensed coconut milk. Start with what the recipe calls for, you can add more later.
6. Add in the egg replacer and blend the wet ingredients.
7. Add the wet ingredients to the dry & mix with blender. In our case, it was still VERY dry and wouldn't fully incorporate.
Optional: Add applesauce in small amounts and even a small amount of water, until the dough comes together and is no longer dry.
8. Add in raisins a little at a time and stir with mixer.
9. Shape dough into about 1" balls and place on baking tray. I used ungreased/lined non-stick pans. Gently flatten each ball with 3 fingers or a fork to make them slightly flatter than round. (This will help them bake more evenly, quickly.)
10. Preheat oven to 375*. We are at 6500 ft. above sea level, so we ended up needing to bake them for 16 minutes per batch. You may need to adjust the timing. What I did was start with a small tray and after they looked done (lightly golden brown on the bottom & fully baked on top) I pulled them out & opened one with 2 forks. The dough was slightly undone when I tried to make them as "balls" the way the original recipe states.
11. Optional-- glaze with frosting or royal icing. I use this royal icing recipe from Lauren Kossack!
Makes: Slightly more than 3 dozen cookies, after some tester cookies were gobbled up! These formed a dense cookie with a nice sweet taste. The raisin flavor was not overpowering. The spices were evident and delicious! The finished cookies were about 3/4" tall and 1.5" wide.
Since I knew raisins weren't going to go over well, I kept looking and found another recipe for regular sugar style cookies. I also learned that during the Medieval/Renaissance time, cookies (as we know them) would have possibly been called jumbals.
With our dietary adaptations, this is the recipe I used:
Ingredients:
1/2 lb of flour (yes I used a kitchen scale for all measurements)
1/2 tsp. of ground cloves (and man are they expensive!!)
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. marjoram (I wasn't splurging on saffron & this is a spice I bought at thanksgiving time that was suggested as a replacement in a recipe that also called for saffron)
1/4 lb of sugar
6 oz of olive oil based margarine
1 Bob's Red Mill Egg Replacer egg
1 TBSP apple cider vinegar mixed with white sugar--I added sugar so that it dissolved into a thick liquid but didn't smell as vinegary anymore (as replacement for sweet sherry)
1 TBSP sweetened condensed coconut milk
Sugar in the Raw (for dusting the cookie dough balls)
Steps:
1. Combine flour, sugar, nutmeg, marjoram, and cloves and stir with a fork.
2. Stir in softened margarine.
3. Prepare the Bob's Red Mill egg replacer egg and sit aside to rest.
4. Prepare apple cider vinegar with sugar OR use sweet sherry.
5. Stir condensed coconut milk in a bowl to incorporate ingredients. Then measure required amount into another bowl. (Because I made both recipes this was already done, also I had a TON left over, so maybe find another recipe to use this ingredient in so it doesn't go to waste!).
6. Combine "egg", "sherry" and "cream" in a bowl and blend.
7. Combine wet and dry ingredients and blend. I added a little extra applesauce (the last 1/4 of a the cup from the earlier recipe so 1/16 of a cup) but it made the end result a little more wet than it probably should have been.
8. Preheat oven to 350*.
9. Roll dough into small balls about 3/4" and then roll in a bowl of raw sugar. Then place on tray. Then gently press down on each one so it is flatter than it is round.
10. Bake for 8 minutes. Again, we are at 6500 ft above sea level and I used a trial and error process to determine my baking time.
Makes: About 4 dozen small cookies, the end cookies were about 1.5" wide. These cookies turned out soft and moist. They were chewy. They were the clear favorite and are all gone the next day. When I make them again I will definitely double the recipe!
Many thanks to the original authors of the recipes for their research & sharing their recipes! Let me know if you try either of these or my adaptations!
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