Welsh Foods
Lap Cake
Pen-prysg, Glamorgan
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Preparing a miner's tuck-box. Teisen lap was a regular favourite.
This cake was traditionally baked in a Dutch oven before an open fire in the district of Pen-prysg, Pencoed. The mixture was poured into the shallow tin at the bottom of the oven and then baked slowly on a stand in front of the fire. A similar method could be adopted today by putting the mixture in a shallow tin and baking it under a hot grill.
Teisen lap was regarded as an ‘ordinary’ cake baked fairly regularly in the coal-mining villages of south Wales. It stood the miner in good stead as a ‘sweet’ for his mid-day meal underground and the moist texture of the cake prevented it from crumbling in his tuck-box. The name teisen lap describes the texture of the cake as the adjective llap, now almost extinct, means moist or wet.
The Recipe
You will need
- one pound plain flour
- half a pound lard (or a quarter pound each of lard and butter)
- one large cupful brown sugar
- one cupful currants
- a little salt
- a little nutmeg
- two eggs, well beaten
- buttermilk
Method
- Rub the fat into the flour, and work in all the other dry ingredients.
- Make a well in the centre, and pour in the eggs.
- Gradually add the buttermilk to the mixture and beat with a wooden spoon.
- The consistency should be sufficiently soft and moist for the batter to drop easily from the spoon.
- Put the mixture into a greased shallow tin and bake in a moderately hot oven.
Pen-prysg, Glamorgan.
Comments - (10)
We had a 3 bedroom terraced house in the Rhondda and living there we had:
Grandfather Plus my brother and me in one bedroom
Uncle and Cousin who shared one bedroom
My father and step mother in the 3rd bedroom
Bit cramped with no indoor toilet or water, tin bath hanging on the wall outside, outside toilet with no flush (old style wooden thunder box) and no electricity in the toilet or upstairs.
Hard time’s.
Hi Gwendydd,
Thank you very much for your enquiry. Please try a conversion table like the following: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/conversion-guides.
Best wishes,
Marc
Digital Team
I do not cook by gas. Could you please give the ffwrn instructions for an electric ffwrn.
Thank you very much. Diolch yn fawr.
Hi Diana. Please see the reply below from our curator who specialises in cookery, Mared McAleavy:
'Yes, you can cook it in the ffwrn (oven). As with all recipes passed down from generation to generation, each family have their set of instructions and they’re all different! Some recipes suggest Gas Mark 1 for 1.20-1.30 minutes; others Gas Mark 3 for 60 minutes or Gas Mark 4 for 35 minutes.
'Keep an eye on the cake, and it should be ready when it’s firm to the touch and slightly golden.'