Oh, what's occurring??

So, I had made little scones for the afternoon tea.  What next?  Well, my mother loves Welsh Cakes and my nan is Welsh (shhhhh, don't tell anyone....)* so I decided to make Welsh Cakes...bitesize of course.

I looked in my recipe books and didn't have any recipes for Welsh Cakes so I went online.  I found a couple of recipes but a lot were from US websites and were far too OTT (spices, zests...wooah there Nelly!  This is meant to be a simple recipe!).  I got caught between a James Martin recipe on the BBC Food website and the recipe I went with below (I figured it was from the people who make the flour to go into the cakes so they should know what they're doing!).  The recipe is in italics.

The recipe - Welsh Cakes courtesy of McDougalls

225g McDougalls Self Raising Flour (I did not use McDougalls, I used whatever was in my flour jar)

Pinch salt
100g unsalted butter
50g caster sugar
50g currants
1 medium egg
2 tbsp milk

Like the scones, I made these by hand as they mixed better than with Berta.

1. Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl.

2. Rub in the butter (now I may have run out of butter so I may have substituted 20g of butter with 20g shortening, but I couldn't possibly say) until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs (literally pick the mix up in between your hands and rub your hands together).

3. Stir in the sugar and currants.

4. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and add egg and milk.

5. Using a palette knife, bring ingredients together to form a stiff dough.

6. Flour work surface and roll dough out to about 5mm in thickness. Using a fluted cutter, cut into rounds, re-rolling the trimmings (again, I don't have any cutters - actually NOW I do since my MiL sent us some Easter cutters, but I didn't on Monday - so out came my trusty shot glass).

7. Cook on a moderately hot, lightly greased griddle or heavy, flat bottomed frying pan for about 3-4 minutes each side until golden (I baked mine on a tray at 200C for about 5 mins as I had further plans for my little Welsh Cakes).

8. Once ready I took 8 of the Welsh Cakes, sprinkled them with caster sugar, put them in an airtight container and then put them in the freezer.  As with the scones, I decided to freeze them in advance of the weekend to keep them fresh.  I let the remaining Welsh Cakes cool a little but whilst still warm, I sprinkled them with caster sugar (I figured the heat would help the sugar stick to them) and popped them in an airtight container.

9. What about the other 8 then?  Well I let them defrost overnight again and then right before serving on Mother's Day I spread butter all over a frying pan and cooked them for a couple of minutes on either side.  I then sprinkled MORE sugar all over them and served.

Both hubster and my little one enjoyed the Welsh Cakes - she announced "mmm tastes good" and renamed them "sparkly cookies". I also took quite a few into the office, together with a tub of clotted cream.  Given there are only 7 people in my team, 1 was out and another is on a diet, the Welsh Cakes (with assistance from the cream) disappeared pretty quickly.  Much to my personal satisfaction!

Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the individual finished Welsh Cakes but you will see a picture soon...

* My nan is Welsh but moved to England with her family when she was around 10yrs old.  She doesn't have an accent but you can tell she's Welsh - she's always singing or crying (or both).  Strangely enough though, her older brother (who moved to England at the same time) maintained a Welsh accent until he passed away.  I never understood that.