Emperor's Day Treats

Every year, Cedar Tree has a Latin Emperor's contest for grades 3-6.  It's elimination, in the style of a spelling bee.  We toga 4 emperors, one for each grade, and all elementary grade students watch with great interest and partake in the Roman Feast at lunchtime.  I forgot to take my camera this morning so I have no shots of my 6th graders competing (it was a good contest, I had to come up with extra words and sentences than I had planned).  But I did document the preparation of what I believe are relatively authentic treats yesterday, treats which were consumed by students while reclining on the quad on a glorious early June day.

I have made Roman Honey Cakes before, and I decided to try for a little more authenticity this year.  There were 15 eggs, whipped in my stand mixer until they were thickened.  Then I drizzled in about 1 1/2 cups honey and was about to add 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour when I stopped, and realized that I should probably use spelt instead, since it's more typical of the grain the ancients would have used.

I do not have an authentic quern, so I used the completely modern K-tec kitchen mill.  I don't have a staff of kitchen slaves, so this is the next best thing:

It makes a lot of noise, but it does make a nicely ground flour.  I added it to the eggy batter and then I selected some spices:

I do have a relatively authentic mortar and pestle.  Doesn't everybody?  Seriously, I use mine a fair amount even when I'm not trying to be authentically Roman.  Although I did try to get the coriander down to a finer grind with the blender, but that didn't work all that well for such a small amount.  Coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, and a fairly large knob of fresh ginger.

I baked them at 350 for about 20 minutes, using muffin tins and nonstick mini-donut pans.  It's best to grease the tins well, and don't expect a light, airy cupcake texture.  These are like a cross between a sponge cake and a muffin.  They are nice to munch on.  I don't know how terribly realistic it would be for the ancient Romans to be able to beat eggs to the degree that a modern stand mixer can do though.

If you're going for authentic Roman food, you really need to check out the Pass the Garum blog, where I got the following recipe for Dulciaria (pepper and pine-nut stuffed honeyed dates).  It's quite delish.

Yes, I used my mortar and pestle twice in one day!  This time, it was to grind pepper the old fashioned way.  I mixed that with pine nuts (which are $26 a pound, so I only bought a small amount).  Then I stuffed the peppery pine nuts into the pitted dates.

Add a dusting of salt to the sticky dates, then make them even stickier by coating them with hot honey (about 1/4 cup simmered in a small saucepan; use a skewer to dip and a small fork to push the date off the skewer after dipping).  They were extremely sticky after sitting in the fridge all night.  The pine nuts have a slight vanilla flavor - I had never noticed that before, probably because they cost $26 a pound and I don't buy them.  The salt and pepper give a nice, grown-up flavor to this authentic Roman treat.

Yum! I'll definitely make these again.