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Welsh Cakes

Pennant, Powys

Adding the buttermilk to the mixture.

The Recipe

You will need

  • one pound plain flour
  • six ounces lard
  • half a teaspoonful salt
  • one cupful sugar
  • one cupful currants
  • half a teaspoonful bicarbonate of soda
  • half a pint sour buttermilk

Method

  1. Rub the lard into the flour and add all the other dry ingredients. 
  2. Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the sour buttermilk and work into the dry ingredients to make a soft dough. 
  3. Turn out on to a floured board, roll out until it is about a quarter of an inch thick and cut into small rounds.
  4. Bake both sides on a very lightly greased bakestone over a moderate heat.

Pennant, Montgomeryshire.

Film/Recording

Welsh Cakes have been tea-time favourites in most parts of Wales since the second half of the nineteenth century. They were usually cooked on a bakestone and the Welsh names given to these cakes were usually based on the different regional Welsh name for the bakestone. These included pice bach, tishan lechwan or tishan ar y mân (bakestone cakes), but in English they became known generally as Welsh Cakes. Here's Rhian Gay demonstrating a modern version of Welsh cakes.

Welsh Cakes have been tea-time favourites in most parts of Wales since the second half of the nineteenth century. They were usually cooked on a bakestone and the Welsh names given to these cakes were usually based on the different regional Welsh name for the bakestone. These included pice bach, tishan lechwan or tishan ar y mân (bakestone cakes), but in English they became known generally as Welsh Cakes. Here's Rhian Gay demonstrating a modern version of Welsh cakes.

Mrs Annie Jones, Blaenau, Llanwrda, Dyfed making Welsh cakes, 1975

Oral history in Welsh: Richard Griffith Thomas of Llangynwyd, Glamorgan describing the bakestone and tripod. Mr Thomas was born in 1894.

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