A Feast of Ice and Fire: Elizabethan Lemon Cakes

The next few recipes I’m making are from King’s Landing, the capital of Westeros.  It’s the most populated city in Westeros, but also the dirtiest.

Since it’s the Capital, those living in the Red Keep receive food as “taxes” from the rest of Westeros.  Everyone living in the slums of King’s Landing, however, must work hard for the little food they can manage, or resort to thievery.  So while the wealthy are dining on pheasant and tarts and other amazing goodies, the poor folks are surviving on “Bowls of Brown,” a stew made of street rats, murder victims, any other meat or vegetables they can get their hands on.

Don’t worry…I will definitely be trying the Bowls of Brown recipe for you later this week!

Elizabethan Lemon Cakes

“Later came sweetbreads and pigeon pie and baked apples fragrant with cinnamon and lemon cakes frosted in sugar, but by then Sansa was so stuffed that she could not manage more than two little lemon cakes, as much as she loved them.’ – A Game of Thrones

I couldn’t make recipes from “A Song of Ice and Fire” without trying Sansa’s FAVORITE food: Lemon cakes!

She can be seen eating them in several scenes in the show, as well as countless times throughout the books.

This recipe is from the Elizabethan era, presumably because the authors couldn’t find a relevant recipe from the Medieval ages.

They were quite easy to make. 

First, all of the ingredients were combined in a bowl (flour, sugar, butter, lemon zest, and eggs).  The mixture was quite crumbly, even though the recipe said I might need to add flour to make it “less sticky.”  My dough was definitely not sticky at all.

Next, I formed them into little balls.  I was worried that they would fall apart because the dough was so crumbly, but it turned out they held together quite well!

Then the balls of dough were tossed in the oven until slightly golden.

Once they were cool, an icing was made using confectioner’s sugar and a little bit of milk.  I had to add a dash more milk than what was called for.

The icing sugar was drizzled over the cookies, and voila!  Lemon cakes!

I’m calling these cookies, not cakes.  They are closer to the consistency of a dense cake, but the size of little cookies.

And they were so tasty!  The lemon flavor was light and subtle.

I tried one before I put the icing on, and it was just as good, so you can save a few calories (and some time) by eliminating the icing if you’d like.

Taste: 10/10

These are so great, and VERY addictive!  We’ve almost gone through all of them already.  They have a mild lemon flavor, and though they are sweet, they are not overwhelmingly so.

They are more cookie-like to me, with a consistency similar to a dense cake.  The outside layer is hard, while the inside is soft.

Difficulty: Easy

A very easy recipe to make that just requires mixing everything together in a bowl and forming them into balls.  There is some lemon grating and baking required, but nothing difficult.

Cost: Cheap

I just needed to purchase a lemon for this recipe, though you may need to purchase confectioner’s sugar if you don’t already have it.  The rest of the ingredients are pretty basic and probably already in your pantry/fridge.

Suggestion:

You can exclude the icing if you’d like.  While these do look really nice with the icing and it adds a little bit of sweetness, they are quite sweet on their own and the icing isn’t really needed.