C17th Cake recipe for Twelfth Night

This fruit cake recipe is from Gervase Markham, top-selling food author of the C17th. For Twelfth Night the tradition was to bake a bean into the cake. Whoever found the bean was the Bean King, Lord of Misrule, leader of merriment and mirth.

"To make a very good Banbury Cake, take foure pounds of Currants, & wash and pick them very cleane, and drie them in a cloth: then take three egges and put away one yelke, and beate them, and strayne them with barme [yeast], putting thereto Cloves, Mace, Cinamon and Nutmegges, then take a pint of Creame, and as much mornings milke and set it on the fire till the cold be taken away: then take flower and put in a good store of cold butter and sugar, then put in your egges, barme, and meale and worke them all together an houre or more: then save a part of the paste, & the rest breake in peeces and worke in your Currants: which done, mold your Cake of what quantity you please: and then with what that paste which hath not any Currants cover it very thinne both underneath and a loft. And so bake it according to the bignesse."