Welsh Foods
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
- Rub the lard into the flour and add all the other dry ingredients.
- Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the sour buttermilk and work into the dry ingredients to make a soft dough.
- Turn out on to a floured board, roll out until it is about a quarter of an inch thick and cut into small rounds.
- 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.