---------- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05
 
      Title: Banbury Cakes
 Categories: Cakes, Medieval
      Yield: 14 Cakes
 
    3/4 c  Light cream
    1/2 c  Butter
    1/4 c  Sugar
      1 ts Salt
      1 pk Yeast
    1/4 c  Water; tepid
      2    Eggs; +1 white,
           - lightly beaten
    1/4 ts Nutmeg; freshly grated
    1/4 ts Cinnamon
    1/4 ts Cloves
    1/8 ts Mace
      4 c  Unbleached white flour;
           - up to 4-1/2 c, sifted
    1/3 c  Currants

-------------------------------OPTIONAL ICING-------------------------------
      3 tb Confectioners' sugar;
           - dissolved in:
      1 tb Milk; plus:
      1 ds Anise extract
 
  Banbury, a town in Oxfordshire, is still famous for its cakes, but
  today the most popular ones are flavored with rum. Still, Markham's
  cakes hold their own some three hundred fifty years after they were
  created. Having no ale barm, we'll use yeast.
  
  Banbury cakes, serve warm with butter and jam, are delicious at
  breakfast or tea.
  
  In a saucepan, scald cream. Add butter, sugar, and salt. Stir to
  dissolve. Pour mixture into a large bowl and cool to lukewarm.

  In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in water.

  Add yeast, eggs, and spices to cream mixture.

  In a large bowl, combine 4 cups of flour and currants, stirring
  until currants are lightly coated.

  Add flour and currants to cream

  Bake.
 
  To make a very good Banbury Cake:

  Take four pounds of currants, and wash and picke them very clean,
  and dry them in a cloth: then take three eggs and put away one
  yolk and beat them, and strain them with good barme, putting
  thereto cloves, mace, cinnamon, and nutmeg: then take a pint of
  cream, and as much morning's milk and set it on the fire until the
  cold be taken away: then take flour and put in good store of cold
  butter and sugar. Then put in your eggs, barme, and meal and
  work them all together an hour or more: then save a part of the
  past, and the rest break in pieces and work in your currants:
  which done, mould your cake of what quantity you please: and then
  with that past which hath not any currants cover it very thin
  both underneath and aloft. And so bake it according to the
  bigness. --Gervase Markham, The English Housewife

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