British recipe
How to make Welsh cakes
Picau ar y maen
Wales
Small, round, lightly spiced cakes with currants, cooked on a flat griddle or 'bakestone' rather than in the oven. They taste like something between a scone, a biscuit and a pancake.
Ingredients
- 225 g self-raising flour
- A pinch of salt
- 1/2 teaspoon mixed spice or nutmeg
- 100 g butter, cold and diced
- 75 g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
- 50 g currants
- 1 egg, beaten
- A little milk if needed
Method
- Mix the flour, salt and spice in a bowl, then rub in the butter with your fingertips until it looks like breadcrumbs.
- Stir in the sugar and currants, then add the egg and mix to a firm dough, adding a splash of milk if it is too dry.
- Roll out on a floured surface to about 5 mm thick and cut into rounds about 6 cm wide.
- Heat a heavy frying pan or griddle over a medium-low heat and rub it with a little butter.
- Cook the cakes for about 3 minutes on each side, until golden brown and cooked through.
- Sprinkle with caster sugar while still warm.
Made it at home? Tick it off and it goes into your kitchen passport.
Coal miners carried them underground as a handy snack, and they are baked for Saint David's Day, the Welsh national day, on 1 March.
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