Almond and Cardamom Cakes 2025
On July 16th, 2025, I was selected to be the A&S Champion of the Barony of the Rhydderich Hael. The project that I submitted was a
13th Century lemon syrup. The Champions of the seven Baronies of AEthelmearc compete against one another at the Seven Pearls Event, which rotates through each of the seven Baronies.
I was not able to attend the event due to family, but my Baron and Baroness said that they would bring my project to the event, for me.
I have a guideline for my A&S projects: I will not re-enter the same item into another A&S competition once it wins. I have no issues with entering the same item, a scroll, a beverage, leather work, or whatever if that item doesn't win. But, once it wins, it is retired from competition. Unless it is food or beverage and I rewrite the documentation to show how I have improved on my earlier work.
This is my rule, for me. I don't have a problem with other people who re-enter the same thing over and over; win or lose. It might have to do with when I was starting to enter A&S competitions way back in the late 1900s. There was a general rule that entries had to be either "virgin" (never entered before) or had never won another competition before. Not every competition has these rules but it has stuck with me over the decades. For me, I expect myself to do new things for competition. It has helped me grow in the A&S world. Forced me to learn new skills, improve my research abilities as well as my documentation.
I took the documentation I wrote in 2017, and 2007, and completely rewrote it for this new entry. I added in my thoughts about Dr. Cosman's "Fabulous Feasts", where I first heard of this recipe, and my personal A&S growth in the SCA. As I wrote in this latest version of my documentation:
As I had stated in the introduction, this project is ultimately based on a non-period cookie presented as a medieval recipe. One might ask why I am taking so much trouble to reverse document this one recipe when there are period sources at my disposal. Aside from the fun of researching and writing, this is an old recipe that I have been making for almost thirty years. Since the 1990s, I understood that “Fabulous Feasts” wasn’t a good cook book to use for historical research, but everyone has to start somewhere. By revisiting this recipe, and my documentation, every few years, I have improved my researching skills, my baking skills, as well as my ability to explain my thinking process to a wider audience. While this might appear to be a modern cookie recipe from an unreliable source, it is actually a time line of my A&S journey: from seeking out period cookie recipes, to improving my writing skills, to learning better ways to bake cookies. When I first wrote actual, multi page documentation for this recipe, in 2007, I had only a Sycamore to my name. Since then I have been inducted into the Fleur and then into the Laurel, and I do attribute this cookie as one of the factors for my personal growth in the A&S world.
As I said, everyone has to start from somewhere. While I would never use “Fabulous Feasts”, or any of Dr. Cosman’s other books, as a primary source, it, like Wikipedia, is a good place to start. The circlets recipe might be one of Dr. Cosman’s most popular recipes, appearing in all of her cook books, medieval studies hand outs and work books, newspaper article, public appearances, and dinners she organized. I don’t remember where I first learned of this recipe (it would have been in the late 20th Century) but it was everywhere, in and outside of the SCA. While her recipe might have been lifted from another cook book, or redacted from an unknown source, my version of it is yummy and deserving of a place at any feast table, vigil, or sideboard. And the research that I have collected on small cakes and the period spice trade is worth its weight in gold.
I did not win, but I was told that my cookies were yummy. Which is a nice thing to hear.
I will have to bloggify my documentation, but I have posted it to my
Academia page.
