Deddington Pudding-Pie, Oxfordshire

Earlier this month I was in Deddington, Oxfordshire. Deddington is a small market town with many interesting old buildings, houses and much history. I was there for a family get-together, so I had little time to explore - only enough for a short walk, and to take two scene-setting photos (taken with one hand whilst straddling a struggling toddler). During my walk I found a shop selling Banbury cakes as per my previous post. The picture below shows the town hall (front left) and the parish church of St. Peter and St. Paul. It also shows how, sadly, many old country towns have become overwhelmed by the motor car. Contrast this (carefully cropped) scene, with the second image. Spot the car park.



Deddington Market Place - image taken between 1860 and 1922
http://viewfinder.english-heritage.org.uk

Historically, Deddington had two annual fairs. One on the 10th of August (St. Laurence's Day) and the other held in November. This latter fair was known as the 'Pudding-Pie Fair' after the pudding- or pudden-pies sold there, and was held principally for the sale of livestock and the hiring of servants/labourers. The date was originally the 11th of November (St. Martin's Day/Martinmas), changing to the 22nd (St. Cecilia's Day), and then reverting back to the 11th of November in more recent times. The Pudding-Pie Fair was still being held at the beginning of the 20th century, but by the 1930s it had diminished and since has evolved into a fun fair. The pudding-pie is now as rare as a Deddington parking space.

The Deddington pudding-pie appears to have been a hard pastry case (the pie) with a pre-cooked filling that included fruit (the pudding), the whole was then baked. Pudding-pies are known elsewhere in the country and often had an association with Lent.

An early mention of the Deddington Pudding-Pie is in 'Notes & Queries' (1869). This records that the pies 'are made by setting up a crust composed of flour mixed with milk or water, and mutton suet melted and poured into it hot. These crusts, which are set up like meat-pie crusts, are then placed in the sun for a day or two to stiffen. They vary in size from about three to four inches in diameter, and are about one inch deep. When thoroughly hard they are filled with the same materials as plum puddings are made of, and when baked are sold at twopence, threepence and fourpence each.'

In the archive of the Deddington News, November 1976, Monica Sansome writes of the Pudding-Pie Fair, drawing on the personal reminiscences of a Mr. Lewis.

From its early days the Martinmas Fair was known as the Pudding-Pie Fair because of the pies made specially for the occasion. Mr. Lewis bought these pies in the early 1900s. They were about the size of a small pork pie, consisting of plum pudding surrounded by pastry. The pastry was made with mutton fat and formed an extremely hard crust "like thick parchment" according to Mr. Lewis, who doesn't remember them as being outstandingly palatable! He thinks they were sold for 2d and 4d depending on size.

Just after 1900 the only bakers in the village to make these pies annually were Thomas and Ruth Fowler. The family had their bakery originally on the premises of Mr. Lewis' shop, then in the Old Bakery, New Street, finally moving to Mr. and Mrs. Beardsley's house next to the Crown and Tuns in New Street... Thomas and Ruth Fowler, like their family before them, guarded the pudding-pie recipe carefully and their recipe died with them.

However, a recipe IS then supplied in this same article, courtesy of Mrs. Ella Marshall who has provided a recipe from 'Traditional English Cooking' (pbl. Angus and Robertson Ltd. 1961) This recipe creates a shortcrust pastry case, but the filling is of cooked ground rice over jam or coconut, and the whole is dusted with ground cinnamon. Quite different to the description of the pudding-pie as a plum pudding in an hardy pastry piecrust.

Shortcrust pastry:
1/2 lb. flour
4 oz. mixed lard and butter
4 tablespoons cold water

To make the filling:
Heat 1 & either 1/2 or 1/4 cups milk (it is impossible to decipher the precise measurement from the original article), add 2 rounded tablespoons caster sugar. Mix 3 level tablespoons ground rice and 1/2 (? same problem) teaspoon salt with 3 tablespoons water. Stir this into the warm milk. Cook and keep stirring until it thickens. Continue cooking "pudden" mixture for a further 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Beat two eggs in a bowl and stir into rice mixture. Flavour with 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence. Roll out pastry and line greased saucers with the pastry. Cover pastry with jam or dessicated coconut, then pour gently a little of "pudden" mixture over. Bake 20 mins. in medium oven 325F until pastry is cooked underneath. Remove from oven and if liked dust very lightly with ground cinnamon. Nowadays these could be made in an 8" flan about 2"deep. Serve hot or cold.


Born in 1903, Fred Deely, a life-long resident of Deddington, had his boyhood memories recorded by Dorothy E Clarke:

Fred once saw the famous 'Pud', which featured at Deddington's Pudd'n & Pie Fayre, held in November and continued until shortly before the Second World War. It was about 9 inches across, fruit inside, and pastry outside. The lad next to the Three Tuns - Fowler was his name - used to be a baker. He had a sister, Ruth Fowler, she was a cripple, and it was common talk she had the recipe, and when she died nobody ever found it.

Mary Van Turner, in researching 'The Story of Deddington' (1933) spoke with Ruth Fowler, holder of the secret recipe and by this date an elderly lady. From her we learn how the pies were made in the early twentieth century.

Pudding pies have not been made in Deddington for the past six years. Miss Ruth Fowler of 'the Old Bakery', whose family had the original recipe from the Bennetts, who were baking in 1852, undoubtedly made that historic delicacy just as it should be, for in sampling one I found it corresponded exactly with the jesting descriptions which every elder Deddingtonian, including Miss Fowler, delights to give.

'They say you could tie label to one and send it through the post a hundred miles - so hard it was.'

'Deddington folk were supposed to save up all the scrapings from the candle drippings in the lanterns and put them in the pudding pies.' This was also repeated to me by another baker, Mr. W. Course.

Miss Ruth Fowler, herself, quotes a story that gives a quaint, medieval flavour to their peculiar character - a King was journeying from Woodstock to Banbury through Deddington. At Woodstock they gave him gloves and at Banbury light cakes, but in Deddington something between the two, like leather but to be eaten.

Actually they contain a sort of glorified bread pudding in a very hard case. Miss Fowler told me that the outer crust has suet as an ingredient, this is filled with boiled plum pudding, the whole being afterwards baked. Once all the bakers here made them and they were sold at the Stalls. Boiled and baked like Simnel cakes, but with what a different result!


So, according to Mary Vane Turner's account, Deddington pudding-pies have not been made by local bakers since 1927. In the 1970s a version of the 'pudden pie' was baked for the Deddington Festival, held in late summer. In an archived piece from the Deddington News from June 2007, recalling an item from the Deddington Society's Newsletter dated September 1973 and focusing on the Deddington Festival held that month, it was reported that:

The highlight for gourmets at the Festival was the sale of Deddington Pudden pies specially made from a centuries-old recipe by the local baker. The pies, which were made in saucers and sold at the annual Deddington Fair many years ago, have a sweet filling of nuts, ground rice, chopped fruit and eggs and are served with cream. The baker, Mr. B. Wallin, figured in the Festival and a bread book used by his forefathers in the baking trade was displayed in the history exhibition at the parish church.

The pies described here are clearly very different to the robust pies created by the Fowlers and other Deddington bakers at the turn of the twentieth century. They certainly sound more appertising. Curiously, the only other recipe I could find for the pudding-pies is pretty close to the the description of the saucer-baked puddings. I have a sneaky suspicion that the local baker may have seen a copy of Florence White's 'Good Things in England', which is where the recipe I cooked is from. It is here called Deddington Pudden Pie, and although the 'pie' is made of puff pastry, the filling is first boiled and then baked. Perhaps the inedible pastry crust was done away with for the purpose encouraging bakers to revive the pudding.

'A Deddington Pudden Pie was.. made by Miss R. F. Fowler and exhibited at the first English Folk Cookery Exhibition... on January 16th, 1931. The following recipe was published in the Daily News in 1930.

Ingredients: Puff pastry: ground rice 4 oz. [110g]; milk 1 quart [2pints]; eggs 3; lump sugar 6 oz. [175g]; lemon 1; currants 4 oz. [110g] I baked with half of this quantity of ingredients.

Time: 10 to 15 minutes to boil and 15 to 25 minutes to bake in a moderate oven [180C/350F/Gas 4].

Method:
1. Grease some large saucers and line them with puff pastry.
2. Make the rice into a cream with 6 tablespoons of the milk.
3. Add the eggs well beaten to it.
4. Boil up the remainder of the milk with the lump sugar, and the thinly pared rind of a washed lemon.


5. When this boils add the rice mixture and keep stirring for 10 to 15 minutes; then
6. Lift out the lemon peel, and add the currants.
7. Pour into the lined saucers to within one inch and a half of the edge of the crust.
8. Bake in a moderate oven until the pastry is nicely coloured and the mixture set. They can be eaten hot or cold.

Although Florence White does not say whether she has managed to get Ruth Fowler to divulge her family recipe, I wonder if the recipe she gives, leaving aside the pastry element, is close to it. A 19th century recipe for Folkestone Pudding Pies given by Mrs. Beeton in her 'Book of Household Management'(1861) is so very close to the Deddington Pudden Pie recipe in 'Good Things in England', that I would like to think that Florence White's recipe is authentic. My theory on the rock hard pudding-pie casing is that it was not designed to be eaten, but was to transport the filling home from the fair where it could be consumed. I believe that the pastry casing on the Scottish Black Bun served a similar purpose, keeping the cake from going stale, but intended to be discarded.


I imagined that the 'pudding' would be solid, but it was a cross between a wet cheesecake and a stodgy custard tart (hmm, that will get you all rushing for the kitchen). Maybe I needed to cook the filling for longer, or maybe that was the desired consistency. I baked my pudding-pie for 35 minutes, with another 10 minutes in the oven whilst it cooled - plenty long enough to get a 'set'. Whilst baking the filling rose like a plump Chesterfield, but became the cushion favoured by the dog when it hit cold air. It wasn't unpleasant to eat, just a tad bland and a little too mealy in the mouth for my liking. On the positive side, the currants were nice and juicy and had imbibed the lemon flavouring. Maybe mid Lent or after a hard day flogging cattle it would hit the mark.

Deddington has the most comprehensive and exhaustive website of local information that I have ever come across during my web research. If you have any interest in learning more about the town and its history, then I do urge you to take a good look at www.deddington.org.uk

Banbury Cakes Revisited

Whilst in Deddington, Oxfordshire, and already feeling inspired for my next post (I am obviously on a roll at the moment!), I came across a shop that sold genuine, 100% authentic Banbury Cakes. Banbury is just up/down the road from Deddington. Having previously made these, I bought myself a packet so that I could see how the original compared to the home-baked.


From a visit to the Brown's Original Banbury Cakes website, I was delighted to learn that the current owner/baker, Phillip Brown, is related to Banbury Cake bakers dating back to the early 19th century. He himself is a direct descendent of E.W. Brown who ran 'The Original Cake Shop' from 1868 - her name appears over the door in this photo from 1902. Phillip Brown hand bakes his Banbury Cakes, and they are available for purchase online, and from a select number of shops (including A. Gold in London).

Since I wrote my earlier post about Banbury Cakes I bought Florence White's book 'Good Things in England'. She has a 'modern' recipe (dated 1929) for Banbury Cakes (alongside Gervase Markham's recipe from 1615), that is apparently for the 'same type of cake as those sold by E.W. Brown'. An indiscreet plug for the cakes reads, 'Anyone who wants to buy the best Banbury Cakes ever made can buy them from E.W. Brown, 'The Original Cake Shop', 12 Parson Street, Banbury, Oxfordshire. The recipe given is almost identical to the one that I baked for my Banbury Cakes.


My purchased Banbury Cakes were oval in shape but lacked the three slashes on top that my recipe had instructed I cut (as does the one in Florence White's book). The tops were crusted with sugar, but differed from my efforts in that they were most likely brushed with egg white and then dusted with caster sugar. I used demerara, but this may have been an embellishment of my own devising.

The pastry was, unfortunately, a little travel weary. The Banbury Cakes had only a short excursion in Ellis' changing bag, but this did compress the cakes a little. I felt that the cakes were probably best enjoyed as fresh as possible, and although they had a best-before date of almost four weeks hence, the pastry was a little dry. However, the filling of fruit, spices and sugar was positively fudgy, my only complaint was that there wasn't more of it. All in all I felt my own efforts were pretty decent - certainly in terms of the outer (hmm, to be fair I bought my pastry), and if I were to remake the cakes I would make the fillings with a little more sugar so that they could melt on the tongue in the way Mr. Brown's cakes did.

Digestive Biscuits

Digestive biscuits are one of our most popular commercially-baked biscuit varieties - the chocolate-coated version gets wolfed down in the UK at a rate of 52 biscuits a second, according to the website of United Biscuits, one of the major producers. Don’t look at me. I can probably only manage that level over the course of a full minute.

According to United Biscuits’ website; ‘The first ever digestive biscuit was created by a new young employee, Alexander Grant [in 1892 according to a United Biscuit’s Press Release, but this site, dates the biscuit to 1839]. The name Digestive was derived from its high content of baking soda as an aid to food digestion.’ This idea that baking soda aided digestion is contemporary with creation of the biscuit, and manufacturers no longer make any such claim.

As an aside, Mrs Beeton writing in 1861 says of biscuits; ‘Biscuits belong to the class of unfermented bread, and are, perhaps, the most wholesome of that class. In cases where fermented bread does not agree with the human stomach, they may be recommended: in many instances they are considered lighter, and less liable to create acidity and flatulence.’ No wonder we are such a nation of biscuit eaters (without flatulence... possibly).

The gentleman United Biscuits credits for creating the digestive biscuit worked for a Scottish bakery called McVitie & Price Ltd., founded in Edinburgh in 1830. In 1948 the company merged with another Scottish family bakery, Macfarlane, Lang & Co., Ltd., to become United Biscuits Group. Mcvitie’s name lives on as a United Biscuits’ brand, and it is the name generally synonymous with digestive biscuits in UK supermarkets - although there are many rival brands, plus supermarket-own versions.

A competing claim for the first digestive comes from another Edinburgh biscuit manufacturer. Robert Middlemass set up Middlemass’ Biscuit Factory in 1835. By 1896 production was mechanised and Middlemass produced the famous ‘Albert Biscuit’ during Queen Victoria’s reign (click here for a recipe) but the achievement he was proudest of was the ‘invention’of the digestive biscuit [sorry, I couldn’t find a date for this one]. The factory closed in 1974.

The chocolate digestive biscuit was first produced by Mcvitie & Price in 1925. They named it the ‘Homewheat Chocolate Digestive’ because the wheat used in the biscuit was grown in Britain, at a time when competitors were using imported ingredients. It was therefore (and still is) a proudly British biscuit - although perhaps the Scots should really get the lion’s share of the credit for coming up with the idea in the first place. Incidentally, it is only in the last few years that ‘Homewheat’ has been dropped from the packaging of the Mcvitie’s Chocolate Digestive after a rebrand, although a scan around the internet suggests that exported biscuits still carry this name - check out the ‘product features’ for a chocolate digestive on Amazon.com!. Don’t laugh, I think ‘snack’ , ‘teatime’,’easy dessert’ and not to mention ‘made in England’ are very important selling points.

In ‘The Oxford Companion to Food’ (Ed. Alan Davidson), Laura Mason describes the digestive biscuit as being, ‘of the pastry flour type, made from coarse brown flour. It is thick, fairly crisp, but also crumbly and, being only moderately sweet, goes well with hard English cheese. The biscuit has no particularly digestive properties and is banned for sale under that name in the USA. Alternative names are ‘wheatmeal’ and ‘sweetmeal’. Recipes for home-made digestives generally include oatmeal to give the required texture.’

I found various digestive biscuit recipes on my shelves. The earliest is from a book published in 1902 (The Queen Newspaper Cookery book series, No. 11 - Bread, cakes and biscuits, collected and described by S. Beaty-Pownall), reproduced in Andre Simon’s ‘Cereals’ (pub. 1943):

'Rub 1 lb. of butter into 5 lb.of wheatmeal; make a hollow in the centre and pour into this 4 lightly beaten up eggs, with 4 oz. sugar and 1/4 oz. of carbonate of soda; mix this all to a little pool of batter in the centre of the flour, then gradually draw down the latter from the sides with a circular motion of your fingers, moistening the dough this produced with about 1 quart of water, added by degrees, till you get it all to a nice workable consistency. Take up one-third of this dough and roll it out to the thickness of a penny; spread a clean cloth on the kitchen table; lift the dough on to the rolling-pin and roll it out again on the cloth, then cut out into oval or round cakes, prick these and place them in the oven. Finish off the rest of the dough in the same way.'

No baking temperatures or times given.

For cooking up commercial quantities (though not a batch to rival McVitie’s) you could turn to the recipe in ‘The Baker’s Repository of Recipes’, published in the late 1940s, and part of a collection of recipes representing Scotland’s bakery industry prior to 1939:

6 lb. soft flour
3 1/2 lb. wheatmeal
1/2 lb. oatmeal
2 1/2 oz. soda
2 1/2 oz. cream powder
1 1/2 lb. butter
1 1/2 lb. pure lard
4 oz. glucose
1 1/2 oz. salt
1 1/2 lb. sugar
22 oz. water

Rub fat finely through flour and make all into a dough. Allow the dough to rest, then run down through rollers. Cut out, preferably with a combination cutter. Lay on wires and bake. The dough is usually passed through rollers in canvas sheets.

This second recipe uses a combination of different flours and adds fats to the mix. It looks not too far removed from the content of today’s supermarket biscuits, but I fancied baking something a little homelier (and smaller in proportions).

110g/4 oz. medium oatmeal [I used fine oatmeal as that was already in the cupboard. By all means try medium, but I think fine will prevent the biscuit feeling too much like chipboard]
35g/1 1/2 oz. caster sugar
110g/4 oz. wholemeal flour
75g/3 oz. butter
A pinch of salt
A small pinch of bicarbonate of soda
1/2 egg

Rub butter into flour and oatmeal, add sugar, salt and soda. Bind with the beaten egg, put the dough on pastry-board sprinkled with oatmeal, and roll out. Sprinkle lightly with oatmeal, roll it in, and then cut in oval shapes. Bake in a tin in a fairly hot oven.

Recipe from ‘Farmhouse Fare - Country Recipes collected by 'Farmers Weekly’, published 1973.

(N.B. The Reader’s Digest 'Farmhouse Cookery - Recipes from the Country Kitchen', carries an almost identical recipe under the name ‘Digestion Biscuits’. The text state; 'As their name suggests, Digestion Biscuits were considered good for the stomach. Certainly, the Victorians thought so, and the biscuits - made with oatmeal and wholemeal flour - were popular in many country households.

Digestions Biscuits were sometimes eaten as an alternative to bread. They are excellent with butter and cheese.')

It was this second recipe that I used for my biscuits. I used an oven temperature of 190C, and baked for 12-14 minutes. The observant among you will spot that I dipped one face of my biscuits into dark chocolate. Well, I had to really. I did try one or two undressed biscuits, and very nice they were too, but it would have been clear foolishness not to also have tried them with chocolate.


As a point of comparison, I purchased two packs of commercially made digestives. Everyone and their aunt produce their own brand of digestives, so I chose Doves Wholewheat Digestives as Doves make the point of stating on their packaging that the biscuits are ‘Made with English Wheat’; and I selected Nairns Oat Digestives as Nairns are an Edinburgh based Scottish bakery, plus the inclusion of oats made the recipe similar to the one I baked from.


This may have placed them at a disadvantage, but neither of the other two sets of biscuit had any chocolate anywhere about them...


The biscuit tasting was carried out by myself and my junior kitchen hand. In Ellis' honest opinion they were all much of a muchness, and all samples disappeared into his tasting hatch at a fast rate. I tried him with a cheese laden biscuit, but this proved unpopular and was quickly ejected from the tasting hatch. For myself, I found the commercial biscuits dryer and crisper, with a firmer 'bite'. I couldn't discern the flavour of honey in the Nairns biscuit, and found the Doves biscuit was of similar subtle sweetness. Both stood up well to a dunking in a cup of tea (a very traditional method of consumption). My home-baked digestives had an easier texture, more crumble about them and were more interesting in the mouth. I had been concerned that the home-made biscuits would end up a little penitential - obviously, the chocolate coating helped - but they were tasty and far removed from a dry cardboard state.


Go on, you deserve a cup of tea and a biscuit...

Happy Birthday to Ellis...

Our little boy turned one on Monday, and we held a family birthday tea the day before. Apart from the birthday boy himself, my attention over the previous week had been on 'the cake'. Having children is an excuse to bake fantastical celebration cakes and play with day-glo icing colours that normally would not grace the tea table. I choose to make Ellis a bumble bee cake as the buzzing noise made by the insect, as reproduced my his parents/Grandparents/our lovely next door neighbours, was one of the first sounds to really make him chuckle. This cake brought a smile to his face too.


I made the cake in two halves, using a recipe from Nigella Lawson's 'Domestic Goddess' (this contains a whole chapter of suggestions for baking for/with children - no jokes, please). The domed top half of the cake was baked in a silver foil lined colander (yeah, don't try it without that proviso), and the lower half was baked in a conventional sandwich tin. The whole was covered in super eye-catching orange buttercream, and the black icing I purchased from the supermarket in ready to pipe tubes. The wings were circles of netting, gathered and threaded onto cocktail sticks. Legs and feelers were sticks of soft liquorice.


Happy Birthday poppet!

Shrove Tuesday Pancake Festival, Hitchin 2008

Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, is the final day pre-Lent. It is the day for clearing your cupboards of eggs and butter (historically both forbidden, along with other foods such as meat, during Lent), and for shriving (confessing sins and asking forgiveness). Pancakes have for many centuries, and in many countries, been a popular way of achieving larder cleanliness on Shrove Tuesday. In centuries past, pancakes made for the wealthy may have contained spices, scented waters, sherry, sack or ale, and could be brought to the table with bowls of flavoured cream or sweet cooked fruits. Fruit fritters - fruit dipped in batter - particularly apple fritters, were also a popular food on this day, and the name fritter can also be applied to the pancake. In contrast to these indulgent pancakes of the past, most of us in Britain are accustomed to eating plain flour, egg and milk pancakes with a sprinkling of sugar and a squeeze of tart lemon juice, quite austere by old standards! A few miles north of Hitchin, the small town of Baldock had a different tradition for Shrove Tuesday. Here the day was known as Doughnut Day, and fried doughnuts were eaten in place of pancakes. Was there perhaps a link with the Dutch tradition of Faschtnachts?

On Shrove Tuesday morning the church bell would ring to call parishioners to church to be shriven. Post-Reformation the bell also signified the beginning of festivities, the last chance for a jolly and a feast before the dry days of Lent. Reputedly, the first pancake race was run in Olney, Buckinghamshire in 1455, albeit unintentionally. One housewife cooking her pre-Lent batch of pancakes, heard the church bell ringing for the Shriving service, and realising she was late for the service ran out of the house arriving in church with the frying pan still in her hand. Olney still stages a pancake race each year, open to women over the age of 18, and happy to dress in the stereotypical garb of the housewife.

The Pancake Festival in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, is in its 10th year, organised by the The Rotary Club, raising money for the The Garden House Hospice and other local charities. Three pancakes races are run:

The men's race.

The women's race.


Fancy-dress, with the 118 guys - obligatory at all good charity sporting events.

In the town square I joined the queue for a pancake hot from the pan, serving to help me limber up for a pancake eating marathon later in the day. For pancake recipes both traditional and new, try this link. I can't record my own efforts, as I am afraid they were consumed all too quickly, only to say they were very good!

Scottish Shortbread

Shortbread is a biscuit ‘shortened’ by the prodigious use of glorious butter. The texture of the biscuit is crisp and snappable- hence ‘short’. The term 'bread' has been used interchangeably with 'cake' for many centuries (cakes, as we now know them, derive from sweetened, yeast-risen breads), and shortbread is the descendent of the short cakes baked from the the 16th century. One story has it that Scottish bakers used the name shortbread to argue the case against paying the government’s tax on biscuits (shades of Jaffa cakes v the VAT man/woman. VAT is currently not paid on cakes and biscuits, as they are deemed a necessity by UK law - the law is not always an ass it seems! - chocolate-covered biscuits, on the other hand, are considered luxuries and therefore are taxable). Short cakes were made from the same ingredients as we would use for a sweet shortcrust pastry (short, again refers to the texture), with the addition of a little yeast. The yeast in these early cakes could result in an uneven rise, remedied by the baker ‘docking’ or pricking the surface of the cake. Some modern biscuits have kept these pricked holes as decoration. Short cakes were eaten across Britain, and many local biscuits (i.e. Shrewsbury cakes, or Goosnargh cakes) are variations on the basic recipe. Shortbread, however, has a definite association with Scotland, and the best of its type has long been an export to the rest of the country, and to the rest of the world.

It is the quality of the ingredients that make shortbread so decidedly delicious, and a lightness of touch in the making. Classic shortbread is made from only flour, butter and sugar, so that gives three opportunities for buying the best, or three chances to produce a disappointing biscuit. F. Marian McNeill writes in 'The Scots Kitchen’ that,

‘Only the best ingredients should be used. The flour should be dried and sieved. The butter, which is the only moistening and shortening agent, should be squeezed free of all water. The sugar should be fine castor. Two other things are essential for success - the careful blending of the ingredients and careful firing.

The butter and the sugar should first be blended. Put eight ounces of butter and four ounces of castor sugar on a board, and work with the hand until thoroughly incorporated. Mix eight ounces of flour with four ounces of rice flour, and work gradually into the butter and sugar, until the dough is of the consistency of short crust. Be careful that it does not become oily (a danger in hot weather) nor toughened by over-mixing. The less kneading, the more short and crisp the shortbread. Do not roll it out, as rolling has a tendency to toughen it, but press with the hand into two round cakes, either in oiled and floured shortbread moulds or on a sheet of baking-paper. The most satisfactory thickness is three-quarters of an inch for a cake eight inches in diameter, or in such proportion. If you make a large thick cake it is advisable to protect the edges with a paper band or hoop, and to have several layers of papers underneath and perhaps one on top. Pinch the edges neatly all round with the finger and thumb, and prick all over with a fork. Decorate with “sweetie” almonds (for small cakes, caraway comfits may be used) and strips of citron or orange peel. Put into a fairly hot oven, reduce the heat presently, and allow the shortbread to crisp off to a light golden brown.’

Jane Grigson suggests having in the kitchen a jar of plain flour mixed with rice flour or cornflour with a 3:1 proportion so that you have this to hand for biscuit making and for light sponge cakes. She helpfully notes that the proportion of ingredients for shortbread are 3:2:1 - flour:butter:sugar.

Advice also comes from ’The Baker’s Repository of Recipes - With Special Reference to Scottish Specialities’, published post-WWII by The British Baker to help reinvigorate the baking trade by providing a comprehensive collection of national recipes:

‘Flour, butter, sugar, and sometimes eggs, was the order of the day at one time, but in shortbread making the type of ingredient used is the chief essential.

There are no spices, fruits, etc., to counteract in the matter of flavour, therefore a good-flavoured butter comes first in importance. Flour would seem to be of next importance, and a very soft flour is not to be recommended. A top-grade winter or blended flour is usually selected. Sugar chosen is usually somewhat hard in the grain.

The ingredients may be well chosen yet the results desired not obtained. This may be caused in the method of making up the dough. Good judges declare shortbread is often spoiled by overworking or overmaking the dough.

The butter, sugar and eggs should be roughly creamed, the flour added, and the dough just formed.

Finally, the baking must be correct. An oven of moderate temperature is used, but the exact temperatures have to be noted from experience. The thickness and type of shortbread being baking govern the baking temperature.’

There are variations on the classic recipe - Ayrshire shortbread also includes cream and eggs, Pitcaithly bannock has chopped sweet almonds and citron peel mixed in with the flour and is decorated with peel. Petticoat tails are a thin form of shortbread baked in a distinctive circular shape with a smaller circle cut from the centre, and then the remainder divided up. Shetland Bride’s Bonn/Bun is flavoured with caraway seeds and baked upon a girdle. I am keen to try out this girdle-cooked shortbread, but I feel that I should give the ‘original’ recipe a go first.

My ingredient quantities came from ‘A Cook’s Tour of Britain’, by the WI and Michael Smith (just a little more butter than Jane Grigson’s ratios), and the method I employed was from Marcus Wareing’s ‘How to Cook the Perfect...’

110g slightly salted butter (or unsalted butter with a pinch a salt) - use direct from fridge
50g caster sugar
150g plain flour
50g rice flour/ground rice

1. Sift the flour into a bowl (along with the salt if you are using unsalted butter), and stir in the ground rice and sugar.
2. Put the bowl of dry ingredients on the scales and return the dial/reading to zero and (here is the clever bit) grate in 110g butter from a chilled block .
3. Work the grated butter quickly into the flour by rubbing first with the fingertips, and then between the palms of the hands. Once the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, stop.
4. Press the mix into a 20cm by 20cm square baking tin and level the surface. Chill in the fridge for about an hour.
5. Heat oven to 160C/320F/Gas 3, and then bake shortbread until light golden (about 40 minutes, but keep an eye on it).
6. Remove from oven and prick all over with a fork, then mark out into pieces (squares or fingers) cutting through to the bottom of the tin. Dust liberally with caster sugar, and then leave to cool in tin.

I thought the idea of grating in chilled butter was a good one, and one that I have since also used for pastry making. It means that the butter needs very little work to properly introduce it to the flour. Putting a bowl-load of buttery flour ‘crumbs’ into the baking tin required faith that the end result would be a biscuit and not crumble topping, but, what do you know, my shortbread was appropriately ‘short’ and the texture was good. The shortbread was very butter-rich, and the scent of butter was also strong (but that might be down to the warmth of my kitchen). The biscuits were perhaps a little sweet for my taste, but that could simply be due to a over-exuberant sugar sprinkle.

Christmas Cake (an escape to warmer climes)

This year I wanted to bake a Christmas cake - my first. I have made Christmas puddings and mince pies aplenty, but despite having polished off many a slice of Christmas cake I have never created my own. I love Christmas cake, love fruit cakes dense with fruit, nuts, peel, spices, and whatever other treasures can be packed in. I love the marzipan layer, and generally I like the royal icing on top (although sometimes this is too hard or too sweet). Lots of people don't seem too bothered about this element of Christmas food, some positively dislike rich fruit cakes of this type, and some (nutters) don't even like marzipan. Well, Christmas is a time of giving, and this year I wanted to give myself a lovely cake. Maybe I could also share a little of it if I felt the spirit of Christmas strongly enough.

I had a suspicion that the British Christmas cakes that enthusiasts such as myself tuck into, are not all that ancient as a tradition of the season. From my research I learnt that the oldest cake associated with the British Christmas period is the Twelfth cake (King cake or Bean cake). Many other countries have their take on this - such as France's La Couronne (or Galette) des Rois, Mexico's La Rosca de Reyes, Switzerland's Dreikönigskuchen or the Gateau des Rois of New Orleans. Twelfth cake was served on the Twelfth Day/Night of Christmas (Epiphany - the twelfth night after Christmas, a Christian holy day commemorating the visit by the Three Wise Men to the Christ child), and was a spiced fruit cake - originally a yeast-raised fruit bread or a light cake made from breadcrumbs, but by the 19th century had become more densely packed with fruit, heavier, and closer in consistency to the traditional Christmas Plum Pudding (which has a much older pedigree). Twelfth cake contained tokens (a dried bean for the King and a dried pea for the Queen) that would determine who had a one-night stand as a monarch, and those elevated could expect other party-goers to act out their every whim. The Twelfth Night feast was known also as the feast of fools, where misrule reigned and the lowest ruled over the highest, servants took precedence over their masters and chaos was celebrated. The feast itself predates Christianity and has links to the Roman feast of Saturnalia. The Puritans banned Twelfth Night activities, but with the Restoration the custom was also restored and the partying continued until late into the 19th century. In 1870 the revels came to Queen Victoria's attention and she deemed that they were irreligious and irreverent. She deleted the feast from the British calendar of feast days and festivals. But that, my friends, was not quite that. Victorian bakers, not wishing to miss out on the sale of the cakes that they produced for Twelfth Night, simply offered the same cakes for sale at an earlier date and rebranded them as Christmas cakes. According to the food historian, Bridget Ann Henisch, by the 1830s the bean and pea were no longer hidden within the cake, but instead were illustrated cards, slips of paper or ceramic figures, drawn from a hat or bag. Henisch suggests that by 1870 public enthusiasm for Twelfth Night had waned, and Christmas Eve and Day had become the focus of what had become a shorter (thanks to the Industrial Revolution) holiday period. Twelfth cakes were sometimes decorated with raised sugar figures or lattice designs, and these decorative elements continue in the use of marzipan, icing, and the odd rogue (although, some might say, obligatory) element of tastelessness on the top of Christmas cakes.

There is no single recipe for Christmas cake, and I imagine it is probably a recipe which most people feel free to adapt to suit what they like (less peel, more booze, no glace cherries, extra stem ginger etc.). It is not a recipe to be precious with, it is a generous cake both in terms of its content and its spirit. I have decided to take this notion and run with it, as the recipe I am going to bake comes from beyond the shores of Britain, I am also drawing upon the Victorian connection and my recipe comes from one of the countries that the Victorians couldn't help themselves but meddle with. That country was known by the Brits as Ceylon, and is now called Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan Christmas cake is a local variation of what would have appeared on Victorian Christmas tables back home. The Sri Lankan cake is made with semolina, dried fruits, chow chow, cashew nuts, almonds, spices, rosewater, honey, brandy, butter and eggs. It is topped with a marzipan made from cashew nuts, icing-free, and is generally served cut into squares. Some of the ingredients betray the influence also of Portuguese and Dutch tastes, two other European countries that passed through.

My recipe comes from 'Cakes From Around the World'. I roughly halved the ingredients given as I only wanted to make one cake. This recipe omits the chow chow - probably because it is not an easy ingredient to find here. To see a recipe that includes it, click here.

Quantities given below will produce two 20 cm/8 inch square cakes.

115g chopped stem ginger
115g chopped mixed peel
225g raisins
225g sultanas
225g currants
225g chopped crystalized pineapple
225g chopped cashew nuts
115g chopped almonds
115g chopped bright red glace cherries
115g chopped dark red glace cherries
3 tablespoons brandy
3 tablespoons rosewater
2 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground mace
1 teaspoon ground cardamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
450g soft pale brown sugar
450g softened butter
225g semolina
12 large eggs, separated (you actually only use 6 of the egg whites, so keep the other 6 back for meringue making etc.)

For the cashew nut marzipan:

225g cashew nuts
450g icing sugar
1 egg white
4 tablespoons brandy
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 tablespoon rosewater
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Phew!

1. In one large bowl put the peel, fruits, nuts, brandy, rosewater, honey, vanilla extract and spices. Give a good old stir up with a metal spoon, then cover and leave overnight for some flavour mingling.
2. Line two 20 cm/8 inch square cake tines with greaseproof paper, and preheat oven to 150C/300F/Gas 2.
3. Using a hand mixer, unless you have wonderfully strong wrists, cream the sugar and softened butter until light and fluffy. On a slow speed, add the semolina and egg yolks a little at a time to avoid curdling. Take a metal spoon and stir in the fruit mixture until blended.
4. Take the 6 egg whites and whisk until they stand in peaks, then using a metal spoon stir the egg whites gently into the cake mixture.
5. Divide the cake mixture between the two cake tins and bake until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out cleanly - about 1 hour and 45 minutes. Leave the cakes to cool in their tins, then wrap in foil and set aside for 3 or 4 days to mature (you can feed with brandy during this time).
6. To make the marzipan put the nuts into a food processor and whizz until finely chopped. Add the icing sugar and other ingredients, processing at the lowest speed until the mixture comes together into a ball (my mixture seemed quite wet so I used extra icing sugar to help dry the marzipan). Dust your work surface with icing sugar and roll out the paste - you want to create a sheet large enough to cover only the top of each cake (roll into rough shapes and trim).


I decorated the top of the cake with snowflakes cut from marzipan - which looked quite tasteful and therefore my fingers felt itchy for a bit of tinsel to strew around. It was served for Christmas tea, that meal not eaten for reasons of sustenance or nutrition, but somehow necessary a few hours after the consumption of the largest lunch of the year. Several of us managed to enjoy a small piece, and found although it was bursting to the seams with fruit and nuts it was lighter than many Christmas cakes. Despite the fruitfulness of the slice, the spices were still evident, and this helped to evoke warmer climes and banished Hertfordshire drizzle. The marizpan also benefited from the extra flavourings of brandy, rosewater, almond and vanilla extract it contained, it was sweet but it didn't have the single dominating flavour that almond marzipan. If you aren't keen on marzipan usually, then I do recommend that you give this one a go - and the cake too!

Merry Christmas!

Parkin (or Perkin or Tharf cake)

To follow on from my Orkney Broonie baking I have journeyed a few hundred miles south to the north of England, with one foot remaining in southern Scotland. Parkin is an oatmeal gingerbread, usually made with the addition of black treacle, baked in the northernmost counties of England as well as over the border. Recipe variations are numerous and parkin can take the form of either a biscuit or a cake. Yorkshire and Lancashire both have their own favoured recipes (Lancastrian parkin has a larger proportion of oatmeal), and so do smaller communities and individuals (some add candied peel or other dried fruits and I have seen recipes with the inclusion of coriander seeds). The thar, tharf or thor cake also baked in the north of England – the word ‘thor’ is rooted in the Anglo-Saxon 'theorf' or 'tharf' meaning unleavened - is parkin by another name. Theorf/tharf cakes were made of oatmeal and water and cooked on the griddle, the ingredients were enlivened at feast times by the addition of spices and sweetening (originally honey). The southern Scottish and Northumbrian perkin is a griddle-cooked variety of parkin (now more usually tray baked in an oven), and elsewhere early recipes for parkin were similiarly cooked. This web-page has some old recipes if you would like to try making the griddle-cooked thar and parkin cakes. Parkin biscuits are a contemporary incarnation of the griddle-cooked cakes, and ingredients such as golden syrup give a modern flavour.

Historically, each community produced their version of parkin to be consumed as part of local events that took at the end of October or beginning of November. The cake was so intrinsic to the celebration that many of these events took the name of the food. In West Riding the first Sunday in November was known as Parkin Sunday. The 1st of November was known as Cake Night in Ripon and Caking Day in Sheffield. In Lancashire, the Monday after the 31st of October was known as Tharcake Monday. The 1st of November is All Soul's Day, and it was customary to give some form of Soul or Soul Mass Cake to callers (children or the poor of the parish) - in these areas the cakes given out were one of the variations on parkin. Over time the national celebration of deliverance from the gunpowder plotters (1605) has taken precedence over smaller events, and gingerbread cakes, already eaten by many in the North of England and Southern Scotland at this time of year, have become a fixture of November the 5th festivities.

I had many recipes for parkin amongst the books on my bookshelves, but I went with one from Sybil Kapoor’s ‘Simply British’ as I have not baked from this book previously (oh, and also, her recipe requires a whole tin of black treacle. This is the sort of excess that I like...).

170g plain flour
3 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons mixed spice
340g medium oatmeal
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
455g black treacle (tins come at a weight of 454g, but I think that overlooking the last gram is acceptable)
115g butter
140ml milk
30g soft brown sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4. Prepare a 25cm/10 inch cake tin (this needs to be oiled and fully lined with greaseproof paper).
2. Sift the flour and spices into a large bowl. Stir in the oatmeal and the bicarbonate of soda.
3. In a saucepan over a low heat, melt together the treacle, butter, milk and sugar. Stir occasionally until the butter and treacle are melted, and the sugar dissolved. Black alchemy (see below).


5. Immediately pour the warm and wonderfully dark mixture into the dry ingredients and beat thoroughly. Pour into your prepared tin, spreading mixture to fill tin evenly.
6. Bake in the oven for 45 minutes, or until firm.
7. Leave to cool in tin, then cut into squares. Again this is one of those cakes that need 'resting' before consuming in order for maximum moistness and deliciousness to be attained. In order to do this wrap cake in foil and store in an air-tight box.

I managed to be very obedient and restrained, and I left this cake for almost a week in its foil jacket before cutting a sample square. Although the flavour of the cake was good (with all that treacle it sure should be), the hoped for moistness was sadly lacking. In common with the Holywake Bake cake that I made last November the core of the cake was a little dry, enough to make the consistency cloying. This was disappointing, particularly after the seven day wait for a taste, and I wonder if the problem is down to my recipe, my baking, or perhaps I am expecting these cakes to have a moistness that they just don't have. Does the oatmeal greedily draw in all available dampness, but then refuse to share it round with the other ingredients. Did I treat oatmeal badly in a past life? I love the flavour and texture that oats and oatmeal can bring, but of my three attempts at oatmeal gingerbread, two have been damp squibs rather than fiesty firecrackers. Can anyone provide me with a tried and tested parkin or tharfcake recipe that produces a deliciously moist and flavoursome cake, a sparkler?

I started this post at the beginning of November, and here I am finishing off at the beginning of December. What excuse can I offer? Well, my junior baker is already crawling and keen to move on to the next stage. Looks like he will be heading to the kitchen all by himself very soon. Every morning he puts on his 'active trousers' (in the photo they are just about to go on), and they keep him moving all day long - and me away from the computer, the camera, and the cake tin.

Broonie (Orkney Gingerbread)

Orkney consists of about 70 islands and skerries, and is located to the north-east of the top of Scotland. In common with its Scottish neighbours and the northern counties of England, oats and barley (in Orkney a variety known as bere is grown, locally called corn) are the cereal staples used for breads and bannocks, and, less/more essentially, ale and whisky. Oatmeal is a primary ingredient in Broonie, a pale gingerbread made with black treacle, butter, brown sugar, wheat flour, egg, ground ginger (never!) and buttermilk.

Gingerbreads, although found throughout Britain, do seem to be particularly popular amongst those living at the top of the country and often include locally grown oats in the form of oatmeal. Parkin, traditionally eaten in the north of England on November the 5th, is another form of gingerbread that includes oatmeal, as does the Scottish Perkin. With Bonfire Night not too far off (fast followed by the big December event that I need not name) I feel a follow-up gingerbread baking session coming on already.

F. Marian McNeill's 'The Scots Kitchen' carries a recipe for Broonie - just one of 67 recipes that the book contains that make use of oats or oatmeal. Under her recipe is the note 'Correctly, Brüni, a thick bannock (Orkney and Sheltand)'; Brüni is a Norse word for a thick bannock. As I have touched on previously, bannocks are a very old form of bread and also the forefathers of the scone. Bannocks were historically cooked on the girdle, but more recent recipes are oven-baked. F Marian McNeill's recipe for Broonie and that of Julie Duff in 'Cakes - Regional & Traditional' are oven-baked. Both recipes contain identical ingredients (although Julie Duff uses self-raising rather than plain flour with the addition of baking soda), but McNeill uses less butter and ginger, and she uses equal quantities of flour and oatmeal (175g each), whereas Duff uses 225g of self-raising flour and 115g of oatmeal. McNeill unfortunately has omitted the amount of sugar required for her recipe, so I am unable to bake two Broonies for comparative purposes/filling a large Broonie-sized hole in my tummy. This is probably for the best...

Broonie (from Julie Duffs 'Cakes - Regional & Traditional)

225g self-raising flour
2 level teaspoons ground ginger
115g medium or pinhead oatmeal
115g butter (cubed, at room temperature)
115g pale brown sugar
2 tablespoons black treacle
1 egg
150ml buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 160c/325F/Gas 3. Prepare a 900g/2 lb loaf tin (grease and line - you know the routine).
2. Sift the flour and ginger into a bowl and stir in the oatmeal. Add the cubed butter and rub in using your fingertips until you have the texture of fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and stir well.
3. In a small saucepan gently melt the treacle over a low heat and set aside to cool slightly (daringly, I warmed mine in the microwave). Beat the egg into the treacle and then add to the dry ingredients together with the buttermilk. Mix all the ingredients together thoroughly.
4. Pour into your prepared tin and bake for approximately one hour (until well risen and a skewer comes out clean).
5. Leave to cool in the tin.

Broonie is one of those cakes for which the instruction is given - 'this improves after a few days wrapped in foil and stored in an air-tight tin' - all very well, but a real test of self-restraint when faced with a freshly baked cake of fragrant and warm charm. Naturally, I cut a few slices to try fresh, and then wrapped the rest of the loaf to try again in a day or so. The Broonie was surprisingly light in the mouth, but was a little dry in texture - something that the day or so of resting helped a little -so a generous topping of butter was a good addition to each slice, but for less indulgency serve with a cup of tea.


Ellis, my young Junior taster (yep, he is now on solids, can't believe we are here already) tried a cube of Broonie, but decided it was not for him. This followed on from the failure of oatmeal porridge, so perhaps I should take note of his lack of enthusiasm for oats. Sweet potato on the otherhand... If anyone has a sweet potato cake recipe?

Win Chocolates for Someone Special (Sadly Not Yourself)

Because we all need a little luxury once in a while, Baking For Britain has teamed up with Hotel Chocolat to offer you the chance to win a decadent box of chocolates from their summer range, AND a bottle of champagne, for a loved one. If you choose your loved one carefully (and I hope you have) then hopefully they woud be kind enough to share their prize with you.

To enter, click here and tell us in 100 words or less why we should surprise your loved one with this luxury gift. It’s time to tug on the heart strings and get out your violin, as the most compelling entry will win! The competition closes on 5 October and entries will appear live on the Hotel Chocolat site.

Small Print: No chocolates were paid to Baking for Britain for the running of this competition (more's the pity). Hotel Chocolat are a company based not far from Baking for Britain HQ, so I am pleased to support them as a local business. If you don't have someone special to surprise, please consider me for the position...

Welsh Harvest Cake / Teisen y Cynhaeaf

I have written of apple cakes before, and have also indulged in a cider cake, but as soon as British apples hit the shops once more then I feel duty bound to honour them with a spot of baking. The start of apple season and the completion of the year's harvest overlap, and a celebratory Harvest Cake using apples seems to me a fine idea. My recipe comes from Julie Duff's book 'Cakes - Regional & Traditional'. Grub Street Publishing very kindly sent me a copy of the book, astonishingly one that I had not previously indulged myself by purchasing. The same book contains a photograph of a coffee cake that my husband claims matches with the ideal coffee cake that he holds in his head - I guess that is a hint that I should unearth the Camp coffee...

There are many regional recipes for cakes to be baked at harvest time, with variations aplenty. Some of these cakes were cooked to fuel the workers during the hard manual labour, and some were produced to be enjoyed as part of post-harvesting celebrations. Before industrialisation bringing in the harvest would be muscle-wrenching, dirty, hot and exhausting; our boys and girls in the fields needed all the calories they could get, and traditional harvest foods went some way to providing these. The Harvest Supper (served by the farmer or land-owner after the harvest was completed) was very likely second only to Christmas in terms of what was provided for workers to consume. For the poorest labourers such food was a very welcome change from their usual monotonous diet. In the novel 'Adam Bede' by George Elliot (published 1859), there is a lovely description of a Harvest Supper, hosted by the farmer, Martin Poyser, who regards his workers with a paternal eye:

It was a goodly sight - that table, with Martin Poyser’s round good-humoured face and large person at the head of it, helping his servants to the fragrant roast-beef, and pleased when the empty plates came again. Martin, though usually blest with a good appetite, really forgot to finish his own beef to-night – it was so pleasant to him to look on in the intervals of carving, and see how the others enjoyed their supper; for were they not men who, on all the days of the year except Christmas Day and Sundays, ate their cold dinner, in a make-shift manner, under the hedgerows, and drank their beer out of wooden bottles – with relish certainly, but with their mouths toward the zenith, after a fashion more endurable to ducks than to human bipeds. Martin Poyser had some faint conception of the flavour such men must find in hot roast-beef and fresh-drawn ale. He held his head on one side, and screwed up his mouth, as he nudged Bartle Massey, and watched half-witted Tom Tholer, otherwise known as ‘Tom Soft’, receiving his second plateful of beef. A grin of delight broke over Tom’s face as the plate was set down before him, between his knife and fork, which he held erect, as if they had been sacred tapers; but the delight was too strong to continue smouldering in a grin – it burst out the next instant in a long-drawn ‘haw, haw!’ followed by a sudden collapse of gravity, as the knife and fork darted down on the prey.

Martin Poyser and his wife, also served plum pudding at their supper, but this was brought to the table ahead of the roast beef. Adam Bede, arriving late to the meal, misses out on the pudding. Plum pudding or plum cake (this could mean a pudding or cake of dried vine fruits) was traditional accompaniment to the harvest feast, but I am unsure why the Poysers served theirs ahead of the beef. Any suggestions? Exuberant drinking followed the meal, so perhaps it was to allow the men to enjoy the ale without the delay of serving the ‘afters’. Of course, for those amongst us who are strong believers in puddings, to consume dessert first – and then see if you have any room left for the main course – perhaps makes better sense than operating in the traditional manner.

Welsh Harvest Cake / Teisen y Cynhaeaf

175g unsalted butter
175g soft brown sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
225g self raising flour
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
450g cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped into small pieces (I had 450g weight of fruit post-peeling, coring)
50g sultanas
50g currants
50g flaked almonds

1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. (Ours is a fan oven, so I baked at 170C for an hour). Prepare an 18cm/9 inch cake tin.
2. In a pan melt together the butter and sugar (the sugar won’t dissolve completely, this is fine, but do stir the mixture). Allow to cool slightly before beating in the eggs.
3. Sift flour and spices into a bowl. Add the melted ingredients and beat together gently.
4. Put the apples, sultanas, currants and almonds into a second bowl, and mix up.
5. Spoon half the cake mixture into the bottom of the prepared tin, and then add the fruit and nuts – at this point I thought that I had created a cake disaster, with a hugely disproportionate amount of apple, and not enough cake ‘body’ to bind the whole together – then finish with the remainder of the cake mix.
6. Lightly smooth the surface of the cake, to press down the contents. Place in oven to bake for about an hour, or until firm to touch and a skewer comes out clean (60 minutes worked for me).
7. Leave to cool in the tin for 30 minutes, before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Once the cake had gone into the oven I spent a bit of time worrying about how it would turn out. So much fruit had gone into the middle of my ‘sandwich’, that I could only imagine that the result was going to be a formless apple subsidence. I kept on peeking through the oven door, to see if I could determine the outcome , but whilst in the tin and baking the cake looked innocent of bad intent. When the hour was up, the cake exited the oven and then sat patiently for a further half hour whilst I plucked up courage to liberate it. Ta-daa! The finger-crossing paid off, and my cake stayed cake-like. In fact, I hadn’t needed to worry at all. When I cut into the cake I could see that the sponge mixture placed top and bottom had cleverly found a way to unite, and the fruit in the middle was self-supporting. From the outside of the cake was discreetly visible a seam of fruit, but inside the centre was a glorious moist windfall.


I served slices of this Welsh Harvest Cake as a pudding, slightly warm with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream – a well-stacked relative of the Eve’s Pudding. I think warmth enhances the juiciness of the fruit, and the spices are encouraged in their seductiveness. Cold, the cake was good, but warm it was pretty sensational.


Just think, the more you eat, the larger the portion of fruit that you are adding to your five-a-day checklist (I recommend this cake as part of a balanced diet – A very learned Dietician and Food Doctor).

Bloggers For Positive Global Change

I have been nominated by Amanada of Figs Olives Wine for a Bloggers for Positive Global Change award. Wow! - what a honour to be so highly rated. Thank-you Amanda for the vote.

The award was created by Climate of Our Future, a site that aims to be a forum for, and a catalyst to discussion about global climate change. The award is, "not limited to any specific ideologies, religions or philosophies." It is a thumbs-up for any blogger who "puts a premium on human compassion and the desire to make the world a better place for all of us, without exception."

If you visit the Climate of Our Future site you will see that the award takes the form of a Meme. I will hold my hands up now and apologise for not continuing this one onwards, as I am very time-poor at the moment. I shall just sneak in a mention for the website England in Particular, a site devoted to campaigning for and celebrating local distinctiveness. The book of the same title, published last year, is a must-have for anyone interested in English traditions (in all their weird and wonderful variations).

Bath Buns

And so we dance a graceful minuet across the country, to take our places within another of the eighteenth century’s spa pleasure resorts – Bath. That’s Bath with a capital B, home to the famous Roman baths, and spa holiday destination to Regency high society. We have the dandyish master of ceremonies, ‘Beau’ Nash, to thank for Bath becoming a beacon for those who came to revive both health and spirits – by taking the waters and pleasure in all forms during the course of the ‘season’. The season being the period between the opening and closing of Parliament, and the time when the fashionable upper-classes met to show off, swap gossip, carry on affairs, party, net a husband/wife, and escape from fossilization on a dusty country estate.

In its hey-day Bath had it all – glorious buildings, a bustling social life, fashionable company, the beauty of its setting in the landscape, and was easily accessible from most parts of the country by coach. Much of its magnificence is still retained, so long as you can see past the swarms of modern visitors. Today’s Bath bun, however, is often a very different fellow from the Bun served in the city during the 1700s, and may shamefacedly appear on the contemporary cake stand as a sorry blimp rather than with proud plumpnesss. Some accounts of the history of the Bath bun suggest that Dr. Oliver, originator of the Bath Oliver biscuit, also knocked up the original of the Bath bun in his Bath bakehouse. I am pretty certain that this is nonsense, not least because the good Doctor as creator of a plain biscuit designed for easy digestion - a salve for overindulged Regency stomachs - was hardly likely Jekyll and Hyde-like to also tempt Bath’s seasonal population with a sugar-topped, butter and egg enriched bun. Other histories attribute the bun to the mythical Sally Lunn – there is a tearoom in Bath of her name –the buns that bear her name are not so different from the Bath bun, both take the form of enriched dough cakes, but they are a separate entity. Laura Mason and Catherine Brown in ‘The Taste of Britain’, trace the origin of the Bath bun to recipes for caraway seed cake. In their book they mention a 1756 recipe given by Bath resident and cook, Martha Bradley, entitled Bath seed cake. Elizabeth Raffald in 1769 follows on with a recipe for Bath cakes, which were yeast-leavened rolls made with butter, cream and caraway seeds (in the form of caraway comfits – sugar coated seeds- some were used to flavour the cakes, and others strewn on top). Over the course of the eighteenth century eggs were added to the mix, as various recipes will attest. A recipe from 1807 reproduced in Andre Simon’s ‘Cereals’ instructs the cook to:
Rub 1 lb. of butter into 2 lb. of fine flour; mix in it 1 lb. of caraway comfits, beat well 12 eggs, leaving out six whites, with 6 spoonfuls of new yeast, and the same quantity of cream made warm; mix all together, and set it by the fire to rise; when made up, strew comfits over them.
During the next century the caraway seeds gave way to peel, citrus zest or dried fruit, and nibbed sugar became the customary decoration. Of the many modern recipes I have for Bath buns, nearly all contain these elements, and produce a yeast-raised, enriched bun, flavoured with lemon peel, topped with tooth busting sugar nibs, and cosy home to a small gathering of dried fruit.

According to the ‘The Taste of Britain’, Mountstevens Ltd. of Bath bake from an adapted version of a 1679 recipe (using mixed spice instead of caraway) – however a browse on the internet reveals that the Mountstevens business stopped trading in 2002 (‘The Taste of Britain’ was first published in its original form in 1999, and revised form in 2006) so whether buns of this historic recipe are still available in the town I do not know. If anyone can let me know, I would appreciate it.

Elizabeth David uses Elizabeth Raffald’s 1769 Bath bun recipe for ‘English Bread and Yeast Cookery’, although she has slightly altered the recipe, swopping cream for milk and topping the buns with sugar rather than caraway comfits (she gives the original form of the recipe in the book). Elizabeth David felt that the Great Exhibition of 1851 was responsible for the decline and devaluing of the Bath bun, as such large numbers of the bun were produced during the course of the Exhibition (nearly one million) and standards become sloppy. Commercial production of the buns often saw lard replacing the butter and cream, and cheaper flavourings used. Buns produced outside of Bath were sometimes known as ‘London Bath buns’ or ‘London buns’. Florence White gives two contrasting recipes for Bath buns in ‘Good Things in England’ – one from 1904 with peel, currants and crushed sugar, and one from the early eighteenth century with sack, rosewater and caraway comfits.

For my try at Bath buns I used the Elizabeth Raffald recipe as revisited by Elizabeth David. Considering the mixed success I have had previously with yeast-leavened buns and loaves, I was a bit nervous about giving the recipe go. But, with the acquisition of new house, new kitchen and new oven since my last attempt, I at least had a new set of circumstances to blame for any failure…

450g white flour (I used strong bread flour - E.D. says, that, or plain will work)
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons caster sugar
225g butter
1 tablespoon caraway seeds (E.D. omits these, but I like the flavour and it is a more ‘authentic’ taste for the buns than lemon, peel etc.)
15 g yeast (fresh) or 7g (dried)
280g warm milk

For glazing:
1 tablespoon milk
2 tablespoons caster sugar
Brown sugar granules for coffee, lightly crushed in a mortar

1. Add the salt and sugar to the flour, then rub in the butter. Stir through the caraway seeds.
2. I used dried yeast so I added this to the butter rubbed flour. If using fresh, first liven it up by adding it to the warm milk.
3. Add the milk and mix ‘to a light dough’. Initially the mixture looks very like cake mix – very moist – but don’t be tempted to add more flour.


Referring to the ‘Leith’s Baking Bible’, the recommended method for hand-kneading soft dough (i.e. with a high butter/fat content), is to take a handful of the dough and pull upwards – then push back down onto the work surface.


You will see from my pictures that although the dough looks quite ‘wet’, it is not sticky and my kneading hand stays pretty clean.



4. Once kneaded, cover the bowl and leave to rise. E.D. suggests this takes about one and a half hours, but it took my dough about two and a half hours to double in volume (the consequence of an English summer, I expect...)
5. Prepare two baking sheets, and use a tablespoon to scoop out 12 portions of dough. Shape into buns and smooth the top surface using a palette knife (or finger). Cover and leave for quarter of hour to regain spring.


6. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes at 375F/190C/Gas 5.
7. Just before the buns have finished cooking, prepare the glaze. Warm the milk and sugar in a small saucepan. As soon as the buns are baked use a pastry brush to anoint the tops and sprinkle with a little of the crushed sugar.

E.D. suggests that if possible eat these buns fresh from the oven. Frankly, it seems quite criminal not to do this, and to waste an opportunity for warm bun savouring. However, if a dozen buns are beyond you in one sitting, then they are good later on split, toasted and spread with a little butter. Eaten fresh they are a bun triumph. The delicate crust has just the right degree of firmness to provide the teeth with the smallest of warm-ups, before sinking into the bun proper. The ‘crumb’ of the bun looks like that of a bread, not cake-like in the way of a brioche - but I think that is down to the strong flour I used, plain flour should result in a more spongey dough. Pre-chemical raising-agents (baking powder etc.) all cakes would have been made using yeast as a leaven, and therefore my Bath buns were a favourable demonstration to me of how such cakes would/could have been, and more successful I felt than the previously baked Saffron cake.


The Bath buns were resplendent with buttery richness, and the quantity of caraway seeds just enough to give extra warmth of flavour. I enjoyed also the occasional crunchy sugar ‘hit’, which allowed my tastebuds to find a counterpoint to the butter. Despite my bread-making inhibitions I found that this recipe (with thanks to my new kitchen?) worked a treat, and these buns were really very good. I am keen now to find another yeast-raised cake recipe to try my hand at, which is good, as I have a fair few tucked up my sleeve for later...

Nigel Slater visits Bath and samples Bath buns (amongst other things).