More on "Welsh cakes"

More on “Welsh Cakes”

As we’re all stuck at home because of the coronavirus outbreak, I’ve got the time to start blogging again, after a hectic several months moving back to New Zealand from Australia after 30 years.

    I’ll start with a big “thank you” to Annette, who was the person who started me off researching Antipodean culinary history—and incidentally the social history that influenced it—with a loan of three of her old Australian cookbooks:

Calendar of Cakes. [4th ed.], Adelaide, South Australian Country Women's Association, [1951?]

Calendar of Puddings: A Pudding a Day for the Whole Year. [5th ed.], [Adelaide, S. Aust.], South Australian Country Women's Association, [1952?]

Green and Gold Cookery Book: Containing Many Good and Proved Recipes. 15th ed. (rev.), Adelaide, R.M. Osborne, [1949?]

Today it’s just a short post, with more thanks to Annette, who is now online (hooray!) and thus was able to email me an addition to the “Welsh Cakes” saga (see the blog article Pikelets & Girdles).

    Annette writes:

“I first ate the cakes in Hay-on-Wye, south Wales. When I researched the recipe back home, I found the basic recipe in Elizabeth David. English bread and yeast cookery. (Harmondsworth, England : Penguin, 1979, c1977. P 537-538.), and a local book titled Home serves. (Burnside, S. Aust.: Burnside and Kensington & Norwood Home Library Service, 1988. p. 126.)

    “I use the Burnside Home Serves recipe which produces a close resemblance to the cakes I enjoyed in Wales. I cook them on the stove top in a cast iron frying pan.”

Welsh Cakes

    8 oz. plain flour;  1/2 tsp baking powder;

    4 oz margarine;  2 oz sugar;

    3 oz currants;  1/4 tsp mixed spice; pinch of salt;

    1 egg;  a little milk

Rub the margarine into the flour. Add the dry ingredients, then egg and milk.

Mix to a stiff paste, like a short pastry.

Roll or press out, cut into rounds with scone cutter.

Cook on a griddle or hot frying pan.

--Mrs Hocking.

(Home Serves. Burnside, S. Aust., Burnside and Kensington & Norwood Home Library Service, 1988)

I can assure you that if Annette makes this recipe, it works!

    These Welsh Cakes can be eaten hot or cold, buttered, with or without jam, but they’re best hot. Yum!

    Why not try them if you’re in lockdown at home, like we all are? Serve them for morning or afternoon tea, or breakfast, or even a family tea.

    It is, of course, a “griddlecake”, “griddle cake” or “girdle cake” recipe (see more in Pikelets & Girdles). The “LoveFoodies” website adds a little more intel: “The cakes are also known as bakestones within Wales because they are traditionally cooked on a bakestone, a cast iron griddle about 1.5 cm or more thick which is placed on the fire or cooker; on rare occasions, people may refer to them as griddle scones.”

    You can also cook a simple no-egg scone mixture in the same way. I quite often make scones like this—you could even use an electric frypan. The only trick is not to make them too thick: they should be flatter than oven-baked scones, about 1 cm high or slightly more. And if you do use a scone mixture, don’t knead it, and roll it out quickly, handling it as little as possible. When the bottom is cooked, flip them over and cook on the other side for a couple of minutes.

Stay safe and well, dear blog readers. And let’s, as Jacinda Ardern says, “Be kind”.