There’s still room in the workshop on  February 7^th,  2015, we are making cheese cake as they did in the mid 1600s.

These were my test cheese cakes that I shared with my neighbors.

From Pepys Diary 1669 April 25th
“Abroad with my wife in the afternoon to the park – where very much company, and the weather very pleasant. I carried my wife to the Lodge, the first time this year, and, there in our coach eat a cheese cake and drank a tankard of milk. I showed her this day also first the Prince of Tuscany, who was in the park – and many very fine ladies. And so home, and after supper, to bed.”

____________________________________________________________________

To make these Bishop Miter Cheese Cakes I have use a Plimouth Plantation receipt that I’ve had for years. I’ve always made the cheese cake in a redware pan however I wanted to make them as smaller, flat hand pies similar to what Pepys wrote about in his diary. I contacted Kathleen Wall, the Colonial Foodways Culinarian at Plimoth Plantation, and fellow ALHFAM’er, to see just how she had made her stiff crust. A while back she had blogged about making them. I loved her reply, part of it sounded much like Dr. Seuss.

“I have both blind baked and cooked it all at once. I have made it in a redware dish and I have made it in a stainless cake hoop and I have made it free form. I have used May’s cool butter paste and Markham’s cool butter and whichever one has an egg and whichever one doesn’t.”

I’m very happy with the way mine came out and I’m looking forward to sharing the receipt with you at the workshop.

Sandie

The recipe that is not shared with others will soon be forgotten, but when it is shared, it will be enjoyed by future generations.
–Unknown