One silver lining about the circuit breaker is that I’m finally cooking from my cookbooks! Among others, I got a copy of Dining with Mr Darcy during my visit to the Jane Austen Centre in Bath. I admired the book greatly when I bought it, but after that I put it aside because I hardly ever bake (and when I do, it’s normally scones). But since I’ve been making so many scones lately, I thought it would be nice to switch things up. So far, I’ve tried four things from the book:
Strawberry Tartletts
My first time making shortcrust pastry! This turned out rather decently, except for the fact that I made the crusts far too thick. But I really like the custard recipe and found it easy enough to follow.
Rout Cakes
The most popular recipe from this book (I’ve already made it twice), these are extremely simple to put together and delicious! My family loved this and raved about them!
Ratafia cakes
Sadly, I failed in this! It’s mostly my fault, since I did not read ahead in the recipe enough to know that the eggwhites had to be whipped. So I tried to hand whip them and got this result:
I thought it was fine but evidently not because the cookies that came out were severely underbaked (and rubbery!) on the inside but burnt on the outside. I might try this again if I have a handmixer.
Sally Lunn Bunns
I wanted to make these because I loved the Sally Lunn buns I had in Bath! It was my first time baking with yeast (I was searching youtube for videos on how to knead the dough right before I kneaded the dough) but somehow, it turned out okay! I used milk instead of cream because the recipe said I could, but the bread that came out wasn’t as rich as I remembered – if I try this again, I’ll definitely use cream! Other than that, it was pretty good; I dropped some off at my grandparent’s place when we went to pick up dinner and my grandfather is still calling to ask when I can make more bread (sadly, yeast is out of stock everywhere)
Conclusion
Dining with Mr Darcy was a fun book and fairly easy to bake from. The recipes are actually a nice mix of savoury and sweet things, but I didn’t get the chance to try the stews and bakes because some of the ingredients are out of my reach. Still, with lovely pictures and interesting tidbits of information about the food in Regency era England, this is a great book for fans of Jane Austen or the Regency Era who want to try some of the food that they had.
I don’t have much experience with any of these baked goods, but they look amasing. Is there a clue in who should try out the particular recipe in the choice of books? 😉
Thank you! The recipes have introductions to them (like the strawberry picnic in Emma for the tartlets) so you can figure out if certain dishes appeared in the books 😊 Otherwise it’s the kind of food that was common at that time!
What a brilliant way to link the recipies with it’s namesake.
Looks like you are taking this baking seriously! Glad to hear that you are sharing them with your family and not eating them all yourself! Ha!
Haha one benefit of sharing (apart from feedback) is that it means I can bake more often without running out of space to store all the food! :p
[…] Dining with Mr Darcy by Pen Vogler: If you want an Austen-related recipe book, this may be the book for you. Dining with Mr Darcy contains a good balance of sweet and savoury recipes (with lots of interesting information about the food). I’ve tried a few few of the sweet recipes in my review and I thought that except for one particular recipe, they were pretty easy to follow. (Full review here) […]