Welsh Cake

When rounds of cut dough are turned on a bakestone, a baking plate, both sides take on a light golden color, while the inside, studded with dried vine fruit, stays soft. Welsh cakes are palm-sized sweets from Wales. Some are made with butter and eggs, others with lard and soured milk, and there are also local differences in whether the plate is set over the fire or the cakes receive radiant heat in front of the hearth. Long used for teatime at home and in miners’ lunches, these sweets are still made in front of customers and sold at markets today.

Rubbing Fat into Flour to Make a Dough Firm Enough to Roll

Butter or lard is worked finely into wheat flour, and sugar and currants or sultanas are mixed in. Finally, egg or milk is added to bring the dough to a consistency that holds together. Dispersing the fat through the flour first lets the dough come together without long kneading and creates a texture that breaks apart finely when bitten.

In a recipe (the ingredient proportions and method) by Kathryn Gunter, a baker in Abergavenny, 220 grams of self-raising flour are used with 110 grams of butter or other fat and 55 grams of sugar. The eggs are added one at a time, binding the dough while checking its consistency. Unlike a pancake batter, into which plenty of liquid is poured, this makes a soft mass that can be rolled out and cut on a board.

Cooking Dough About 6 mm Thick over Medium Heat

The dough is rolled out to about 6 millimeters and cut into rounds about 5 centimeters in diameter. These are placed on a lightly greased iron griddle and cooked one side at a time over medium heat. They are done when the side touching the griddle has browned lightly and the inside feels puffed. If they are rushed over high heat, raw dough remains in the center even when the surface burns.

On the other hand, cooking them too long drives the moisture out of each thin cake, making it dry in the mouth. They are finished while checking the color of the surface and how springy they feel to the touch, then sprinkled with sugar while hot. Both sides are toasty, the middle stays soft, and the small pieces of dried vine fruit add variety to the flavor.

In Pennant, Lard and Fermented Milk Are Used

A method handed down in Pennant, Powys, uses lard and tangy buttermilk instead of eggs and butter. The fat is worked into the flour, and the dough is bound with bicarbonate of soda dissolved in the fermented milk. Compared with the egg-bound method of today’s bakers, it shows that a sweet with the same name has many household versions that use the fats and milk at hand.

What both have in common is a dough firm enough to place on a griddle and a flat shape that is cooked by turning it over. Rather than special decorations or fillings, the proportions of flour and fat, the thickness, and how the heat reaches the dough determine the texture.

In North Cornelly, Radiant Heat from the Hearth Is Used

National Museum Wales has also recorded the “round cakes” handed down in North Cornelly, in Glamorgan in the south. Both butter and lard are rubbed into flour, which is combined with currants, sugar, nutmeg, egg, and milk. According to the museum, the sweets collectively known as Welsh cakes in the region were eaten in farmhouses and small cottages alike and were also packed in miners’ lunch boxes.

Besides setting the baking plate directly over the fire, in the valleys of Glamorgan people also favored baking with a Dutch oven placed in front of an open hearth. Two or three rows of small rounds are set out to receive radiant heat from the glowing fire. The museum also suggests a substitute: baking on a shallow tray placed low under a grill. Pressing each side of the flat dough against a plate is not the only cooking method found in the regional records.

From Griddle Breads to Sweets Made with Sugar and Dried Fruit

The baking plate is not a tool only for sweet bakes. In Wales it has also been used for flat oat breads, pancakes, and filled doughs. Out of a way of life in which grain flours were baked on a plate set over the fire grew small sweets made more tender with fat and enriched with sugar, dried fruit, and spices. By the late 19th century, Welsh cakes were a teatime staple in many parts of the country.

Sweets with added cinnamon or nutmeg are also bound up with a history of importing ingredients from far away. Yasmin Begum, who studies food culture, links the spread of today’s sweet, fragrant cakes in the late 19th century, in contrast to a tradition of unsweetened, unspiced flat breads, to the growing availability of imported goods. Sugar supported by colonial trade and enslaved labor, and spices arriving at the ports, came to be used even in the everyday sweets taken to coal mines and quarries.

Names Derived from the Baking Plate, and Household Records

Local names also reflect the link with the tool. Names recorded by the museum, such as pice bach, tishan lechwan, and tishan ar y mân, reflect what the baking plate was called in each locality. The English name “Welsh cake” is a name that brings these variations together.

Differences in household fats and milk also survive in Powys’s lard and soured milk and Glamorgan’s combined use of butter and lard. The memories of the elderly women whom the folklorist Minwel Tibbott interviewed from 1969 onward reach back to kitchens of the late 19th century. A cake baked in a farmhouse or a mining household was both a sweet served at teatime and a sweet treat packed in a miner’s lunch box. On St David’s Day, March 1, Welsh cakes still appear on celebratory tables today.

Products with Chocolate Chips, or with Cheese and Leek

Today’s shops also make flavors other than dried vine fruit. The Welsh Government’s tourism site mentions, among others, the chocolate-chip cakes of Cardiff Bakestones, made at a market in Cardiff. Rogue Welsh Cakes in Newport also makes savory versions with cheese and leek.

Although the eggs, milk, and flour they use differ, the shops carry on the method of shaping the cakes by hand and cooking them on an iron griddle. Makers who have inherited regional tools and names are adding new flavors in today’s markets to a sweet that has been served with tea since the late 19th century.

The catering team at National Museum Wales presents heart-shaped Welsh cakes for St Dwynwen’s Day on January 25, a day celebrating love. It also suggests using cranberries instead of currants as an option for adding a touch of red.

Glossary