Tag: simple

Irish Halloween Treats

19th century, 20th century, Bread, Cakes, Large Cakes, Small Cakes

There are several Halloween traditions around these isles, but arguably the strongest traditions abide in Ireland.

Several years ago, I discovered online a trove of fascinating Irish social history at the National Folklore Collection. This project is the digitisation of thousands of essays written by Irish schoolchildren and teachers from over 5000 primary schools in the Irish Free State, between the years 1937-1939. These social history essays contain information gleaned from parents and grandparents, and give a fascinating insight into hearth and home stretching back to famine times in the nineteenth century. This amazing resource is searchable on an abundance subjects, but of course the food essays are going to be my main interest.

If you’d like a deep-dive into just how much information is available to explore, my paper “The Boxty Paradox: Everything, Everywhere, All At Once” can be downloaded from the Books and Writing page. One thing that became aparrent during the research of that paper was just how bleak the food choices of so many families were. Consequently, the celebratory foods might seem to us rather plain. However, they can also demonstrate an appreciation for, if not the finer things in life, then life’s simple pleasures.

“Hallowe’en was a great night among the Irish people long ago and they looked forward to it for many weeks. All the boys and girls would gather together in one house and they would have great feasting & merrymaking.”

Collected by Annie Fallon from Mr John Harley, Farmhill, Co. Mayo1

The Halloween/November’s Night/Oidhche Shamhna foods most mentioned are barn brack/bairín breac – a ‘speckled loaf’ originally of caraway seeds, but more recently dried fruit – boxty, apples and nuts.

“In this locality the popular food at Halloween are apples, nuts, and boxty, also dumplings of many kinds.”

Collected by Mrs A. Montgomery from Mrs Kelly, Corr, Co. Cavan2

According to many accounts, the Halloween barn brack was saved up for and bought from a bakery. These cakes were baked containing a ring, and whoever got the piece of cake with the ring was supposed to get married within a year.

“Halloweve night falls on the last night of October. On that day my mother goes to town and she buys apples, nuts and a barn-brack. “

Collected by Jerard Jordan from Mrs Gara, Tivannagh, Co. Roscommon.3

Alternately, during hard times, a soda cake would be baked at home either on the griddle or inside a bastible (lidded pot). The most coveted cake was baked with sour cream, but apples and hazelnuts could also be added.

“apples are put in cakes for November night.”

Collected by Tommy Kelleher from Mrs Margaret Kelleher, Mullaghroe South, Co. Cork4

“The cream cake was a soda cake with plenty of cream in it and baked in the griddle.”

Collected by Beití Ní Dhomhnaill from Mrs Ashe, teacher, Dún Beag5

“On special occasions … a cream cake was made. Cream was mixed through the milk when mixing the dough. Currants, sugar and raisins were also put in the cream cake to make it rich and sweet.”

Collected by Seamus Daly, Kilclooney, Co. Waterford6

“On festive occasions a special cake was baked of such ingredients as flour, eggs, sour cream and a little sugar.”

Collected by Mary Jones from Mr M. Jones, Bruree, Co. Limerick7

“… cream cakes were made. These were made thin, but otherwise were made in the same way as ordinary soda cake.”

Collected by Michael Collins, Woodcock Hill, Co. Clare8

The recipes this week are two versions of soda cake mentioned in accounts in The Schools Collection: the cream cake and a fruit cake. According to the written accounts, the cream cake was considered the pinnacle of social delicacies, in numerous accounts warranting special mention. The fruit soda cake has more oblique mentions, but is absolutely symbolic of the foods enjoyed at Halloween. You can, of course, choose to add apples and nuts to the cream cake, if liked.

 Cream Cake

In the 19th century in Ireland, white flour was expensive, so if wheat flour was used at all, in most households it was wholemeal. I’ve opted for a less dense mixture of white and brown. Choose your own variation.

If you’d like to add apples and nuts to your cream cake, use the proportions in the recipe below, and reduce the sugar to 50g.

450g plain flour/wholemeal/brown/mixture
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
2 large eggs
85g sugar – caster, light/dark brown – your choice
300ml sour cream
100ml milk

  • Prepare your baking tin(s). You can, of course, bake your soda cake freeform, but a tin is also fine. My tin of preference is a 24cm shallow square tin, but you can also choose smaller tins or indeed choose to bake them in a pan on the ob over medium-low heat. If using a tin, line with baking parchment.
  • Heat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan. If using the hob, put a non-stick pan over medium-low heat (4 on a 1-9 scale) and allow to heat thoroughly.
  • Put the flour(s), soda, salt, sugar and eggs into a food processor and blitz briefly until well combined.
  • Tip the mixture into a large bowl.
  • Mix the milk and cream together until smooth, then add to the dry ingredients bit by bit. NB You might not need all of the milk mixture, as it will depend on the amount of moisture already in the flour and eggs. You want a soft dough, so a little extra is fine, but not enough moisture will lead to a dense loaf too stiff to rise.
  • When your dough is fully combined, tip out onto a floured surface.
    • For soda farls to cook on the hob, divide the dough into two, and lightly shape each half into rounds. Gently pat down until 4cm in height. Using a dough scraper or similar, cut each round into six or eight triangles.
    • For a large loaf, shape into a round and transfer to your prepared tin. Cut a deep cross in the top to assist in even cooking. If you have any of the cream mixture left, you can brush it over the top of your loaf as a glaze.
  • To cook your cream cake(s)
    • For a large loaf, bake for 45-50 minutes, turning the oven half-way through to ensure even baking.
    • For cream farls, bake gently in your pan for around 10 minutes each side, turning carefully when the first side is toasted and lightly browned.
  • Cool briefy on a wire rack and serve warm with plenty of good butter.

Apple and Hazelnut Soda Cake

Apples and nuts were central to the feasting at Halloween and this sweet soda cake is rich with both kinds of autumnal bounty. Enjoy warm from the oven or toasted, with a generous spreading of good butter. I’ve chosen to use Bramley cooking apples, as they break down into fluff when cooked.

100g whole unblanched hazelnuts
450g plain flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
50g sugar – caster, granulated, Demerera, light/dark brown – your choice
2 Bramley Apples – or 500-600g of similar cooking/sharp apples
200ml plain yogurt
200ml whole milk

  • Prepare your baking tin. My tin of preference is a 24cm shallow square tin. Line with baking parchment.
  • Heat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.
  • Put the hazelnuts onto a baking tin and bake for 10 minutes until lightly browned and toasty. You can remove the skins by rubbing the nuts in a clean cloth, but I prefer to leave them as is.
  • Put the flour, salt, sugar and soda into a bowl and whisk together.
  • Peel and core your apples, and chop into 2cm pieces. Add the chopped apple and nuts to your dry ingredients and mix.
  • Whisk together the yogurt and milk, then gradually add to the rest of the ingredients. I find it best to stir the liquid through with a round-ended knife, which is less rough than a larger utensil. You might not need all of the liquid as the apples will contribute to the moisture of the mix.
  • Tip out your dough and shape lightly into a round. Transfer the dough to your baking tin, and cut a deep cross in the top to facilitate even baking.
  • Bake for 50-60 minutes until risen and browned, turning the tin around after 30 minutes.
  • Cool briefly on a wire rack and enjoy warm or toasted with lots of good butter.

1 The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0096, Page 84
2The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0982, Page 233
3 The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0234, Page 307
4 The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0359, Page 144.
5 The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0626, Page 350.
6 The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0654, Page 447.
7The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0498, Page 131
8 The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0598, Page 249

Griddle Scones

19th century, 20th century, Bread, Small Cakes, Yeast

Following on from the Slapan last time, I have another bakestone recipe for you – Griddle Scones!

I love a scone. I willfully and shamelessly pronounce it ‘skon’ too – even though I know the etymology dictates that it should rightfully be pronounced ‘sk-ohhh-n’, because that brings images to mind of little finger outstretched and pretensions of grandeur, so I just prefer the short, humble sound of ‘skon’. Fight me.

Traditional scones are absolutely the easiest and best thing to whip up when presented with an Entertaining Emergency™. You can be serving up a batch of fragrant and hot scones in about 30 minutes – and that includes 15 minutes of baking!

Griddle scones are not that kind of scone – the time required is closer to 3.5 hours, start to finish. “Why would I bother waiting around for all that time when I can have some oven scones in just 30 minutes?” I hear you ask. I’m afraid I have no quick response, but for the fact that if you were to make these, you would then have your answer.

So do you like eating soft, billowy clouds? Because making griddle scones is how you get to eat sweet, billowy, buttery clouds. The yeast dough is enriched with double-strength milk, butter, eggs and sugar, and therefore it requires much longer to prove – 2 hours in the first instance. So while it’s a relatively long time, it’s not a hands-on commitment. The second rise can be up to an hour, but I recommend starting cooking half the dough after about 40 minutes – mainly because if, like me, you don’t actually possess a griddle, but do possess a rather nice non-stick pan, you can cook the first half of the dough easily, with plenty of room for manoeuvering the scones when turning them over. I have tried cooking the whole dough all at once, and it was very tricksy – plus the scones expand upwards quite considerably during baking, which was also not helpful in a confined pan space.

If you’re a fan of muffins then, aside from the extended rising time, this method is pretty much the same, but with one subtle difference. The enrichments of butter, sugar and egg mean that the cooked dough remains incredibly soft. Even when browned, the outsides of these scones never approaches anything remotely close to crusty. The sides of the scones are particularly delicate, and as supple as skin. In enjoying them, we must be mindful of Hannah Glasse’s advice when referring to muffins, in that they must be split/pulled apart, for to use a knife on them when hot, is to squish down the cloud of dough to something claggy and leaden. The best approach I have found is to use a serrated knife to just break the skin of the scone on the sides, then use the tines of two forks to pull the scones apart. You don’t have to use forks, of course, you can just pull them apart – but I must be lacking a bit of skill there, because I always seem to end up with one pillowy side and one thin and somewhat meagre side, and thus reduce the overall eating experience by half.

Griddle scones go back to the 19th century, but this recipe is scaled down and adapted from an absolute classic of griddle/bakestone cookery, “Morning and Hot Plate Goods” by John Boyd (undated, but thought to be 1946-ish) – a veritable cornucopia of commercial recipes from the offices of The British Baker. He calls them fermented scones, but I’ve opted for the more easily understood Griddle Scones.

Griddle Scones

This recipe has the unusual ingredient of ‘double strength’ milk, which is water mixed with twice the usual quantity of milk powder. I use whole milk powder, because that’s what I have in the cupboard, but skimmed milk powder, which might be easier to find, would be fine as well.

145ml water
30g whole milk powder
scant ½ tsp salt
45g unsalted butter
45g caster sugar
1 large egg – beaten
260g plain flour
1 sachet fast action yeast

  • Put the water, milk powder, salt, butter and sugar in a small saucepan and stir over low heat until the butter melts and the sugar is dissolved. Cool to blood temperature, whisk in the egg, then pour into a bowl. Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and stir until combined. The dough will be very soft and moist.
  • Cover the bowl with plastic, or a cloth, and set aside to rise for 2 hours.
  • Gently tip out the dough onto a floured surface and divide it into two (roughly 270g each). Shape each half into a circle, and pat down gently until it is 2-3cm thick.
  • Using a dough scraper or similar, cut each round into triangular farls. These can be as few as four or as many as eight.
    The sizes of scone you get whether cutting your round into (L->R) four, six or eight.

    I think six farls is probably the happy medium, unless you’re serving teeny scones for afternoon tea, in which case go with the eight.

  • Slide the farls apart from one another, so that they have room to rise, and cover lightly with a cloth.
  • Leave to rise for 30-40 minutes.
  • Put a non-stick pan on medium-low heat (4 on my hob) and allow it to heat through. This will take about 5 minutes. You want the pan to be evenly hot throughout, otherwise your scones will cook unevenly. No need to grease the pan.
  • Cook your first batch of scones. NB: As you move each scone into the pan TURN IT OVER and cook the top first. By cooking the rounded, risen ‘top’ first, and the already-flat bottom second, your scones will have a much neater shape. Not turning them over will make your finished scones rather misshapen. Still delicious, but not at their best to look at. Spread them out, avoiding the centre of the pan as it will be the hottest. Cook for 4-5 minutes until browned on the bottom, then carefully turn them over and cook until both sides are evenly coloured. Don’t worry if you turned them too early, you can flip them again once the second side is done.They will continue to rise with the heat of the pan, and will become almost wobbly, so try and turn them over in one fluid motion and then don’t touch them until they have cooked for a further four minutes. To check for done-ness, lightly rest a finger on the top of a scone and try to move it gently from side to side: if there’s no longer any wobble, the scone is cooked.  
  • Cool on a wire rack.
  • To serve: If not eating immediately, when time to serve, warm the scones in the oven. Use a serrated knife to break the ‘skin’ on the sides of each scone, then pull apart either by hand or by using the tines of two forks. Butter generously and enjoy.

Slapan

20th century, Bread, Small Cakes, Sweet Pastry

I’ve been reading a lot of bakestone recipes lately, and, spoiler alert, if you like Welsh Cakes, then this recipe is about to become your new favourite.

This recipe comes from a small but delightful mid-20th century recipe book. “Croeso Cymreig: A Welsh Welcome”, originally published by the Wales Gas Board in the 1950s (mine is from 1957). I’ve seen a couple of editions on the second hand market (AbeBooks) for about £20, but more modern editions seem available for as little as £3. These newer editions are published by Gwasg Dinefwr Press or John Jones Press under the title “Recipes from Wales – 113 Traditional Welsh Recipes”. Alternatively, you can view a copy online for free at Archive.com.¹

One of the reasons why I like this book is that it includes several variations of the same recipe. Some of them have different cooking methods too, for example, there are three Teisen Lap (‘moist cake’) recipes that can be cooked in an oven, in a Dutch oven in front of the fire, or on a griddle.

Slapan originates in North Wales. The book contains two Slapan recipes – ordinary Slapan, and Slapan Sir Fon (Anglesey Slapan). The difference between the two seems to be that Slapan is made with mixed fruit, and Slapan Sir Fon is made with currants only. Doing some more reading, I found a third version – Slapan Dafydd (Saint David’s Slapan) – which is made with sultanas only.

There are subtle variations in both the liquid used (milk/buttermilk) and leavening agents (baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, and also a little of both), but essentially it is the same method for all: rub the butter into the flour, add the rest of the ingredients and bring together into a soft dough with the eggs and liquid. Spoonfuls of the dough are then cooked on a bakestone, turning halfway through. An important aspect of the appeal of these teatime dainties is the speed with which they can be brought to the table – not much more than 30 minutes from start to finish. Perfect for when company drops by unexpectedly.

Taste

So what are they like to eat? Really delicious, actually. I mentioned above that Slapan are similar to Welsh Cakes, and they are, but without any of the spicing of the latter. Also in contrast, they are very light. With all the love in the world, even Welsh Cake devotees must admit they’re decidedly firm in texture. The texture of Slapan is much closer to a scone, or a muffin, but decadently rich with butter. They are not overly sweet, the dried fruit contributing a lot, so there is relatively little sugar added. Slapan are best served warm from the pan, split and generously buttered. Crisp outsides give way to a soft, cake-like centre, and with lashings of delicious butter melting inside, it’s a surprisingly rich treat.

Equipment

You don’t need a bakestone to cook your Slapan, a non-stick pan and a heat source with serve just fine. Slapan are baked, not fried, so there is no need to grease the pan. The traditional method is to spoon the mixture onto the bakestone using two spoons, but I found my small ice-cream scoop² much easier to use, in addition to making small, delightful 2-bite Slapan.

Slapan

Each batch makes approximately 12 Slapan. If you’re using gluten-free flour, then you may need to add extra flour (see note below).

120g plain flour/gluten-free flour³
60g chilled butter – cubed
20g sugar (caster or soft brown)
¼ tsp salt
scant ½ tsp baking powder
30-50g mixed dried fruit/currants/sultanas
1 large egg
2-ish tbs milk

  • Put a non-stick pan onto a medium (number 5 on my 1-9 electric hob) heat and let it come to temperature while you mix up the dough. if you’re using gluten-free  flour, you should delay this until the mixture half-rested.
  • Put the flour, butter, sugar, salt and baking powder into the bowl of a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
  • Crack the egg into a mixing bowl and add milk for a total of 90ml of liquid. Whisk together well (I use a stick blender), then add the flour mixture and dried fruit.
  • Fold together until the mixture forms a smooth-ish dough. The consistency should be like that of a fruit cake, or mashed potatoes. Definitely too soft to roll out.
  • Using a small ice-cream scoop, or two spoons, drop the dough into the now hot pan. Drop them around the edge, rather than the middle, so that they don’t scorch. Cooking them all at once will make it tricky to turn over, so do two batches of six or seven.
  • Bake for 5 minutes. A light crust will form on the bottom of each heap.
  • Using two cocktail sticks, carefully turn each Slapan over.
  • Bake for a further 3-4 minutes until the underside is as browned as the top.
  • Cool on a wire rack.
  • Split, butter and serve warm.

Bonus Recipe: Christmas Slapan

Here’s my own take on a Slapan variation, seen top right in the photo – with the addition of candied peel, mixed spice and a splash of booze. Much quicker to rustle up than mince pies.

120g plain flour/gluten-free flour³
60g chilled butter – cubed
20g soft brown sugar
¼ tsp salt
scant ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp mixed spice
15g candied lemon and orange peel, finely chopped
15g dried cranberries or barberries
20g dried currants
1 large egg
1 tbs brandy
1 tbs cream sherry/madeira

  • Method as above.

¹ You need to sign up to be able to borrow books, but it is free, no strings attached.

² A small ice-cream scoop of 4cm diameter, roughly 30ml volume.

³ I’ve made this recipe with two different gluten-free flours. Schar’s Baking/Patisserie flour (red bag) contains a thickener (guar gum), and so the recipe took the same quantity of flour as regular flour. Dove’s Farm Freee gluten-free flour contains no thickener, and they recommend adding xantham gum when using. I didn’t have any, so I ended up adding more flour (60g in 2 batches of 30g) and allowed it to sit a while (20 minutes) to allow the excess liquid to be absorbed.

Cookeels

18th century, 19th century, Bread, Yeast

I have a ‘lost’ recipe for you today – a spiced bun that has been known about, recorded and discussed for over 200 years, but for which there has been no recipe. Until now.

British Popular Customs, Present and Past; Illustrating the Social and Domestic Manners of the People: Arranged According to the Calendar of the Year
By Thomas Firminger Thiselton Dyer · 1876 p81

As luck would have it, I found not one but two recipes buried in the handwritten manuscripts held by The Wellcome Collection.

The earliest mention of Cookeels is found in Robert Forby’s The Vocabulary of East Anglia.

Cookeel: A sort of cross-bun, made and eaten in Norfolk during Lent. They are sold cheap and may be from Fr. Coquille.
The Vocabulary of East Anglia, Robert Forby, 1830, p76.

This definition is expanded upon throughout the nineteenth century as more and more academics weigh in with their opinion.

From “A glossary of words used in East Anglia, founded on that of Forby”, p46, Walter Rye, 1895, London
Notes and queries, Fifth Series, Volume Ninth, 1878, Jan-June, London. p87
Notes and queries, Fifth Series, Volume Ninth, 1878 Jan-June, London. p152

Something that became more and more apparent, is the somewhat lackadaisical approach to the spelling of these baked items. This is also true of the names of the two manuscript recipes, to whit Cookeals and Cock Ells:

MS7850, Anonymous manuscript circa 1745, Wellcome Collection

MS7834, Anonymous 19thC manuscript, Wellcome Collection

Confession time, I do like to get the the truth of the matter when it comes to recipe names and history. Love a great backstory, cannot be doing with made-up rubbish. So with all these different names, I decided to drill down and see if I couldn’t get to the bottom of it all (this phrase will come back to haunt me shortly).

I don’t think there’s much merit in the name deriving from the French ‘coquille’ (shell): there’s no hard crust, due to the butter, milk and eggs, and no mention of them being shell-shaped. Similarly, I think naming them after the cockfighting pits is also a bit of a stretch. The various accounts seeme to waver between Cockeel and Cookeel, and neither of the handwritten recipes offer any definitive help.

Playing around with the spelling, it turns out that Cockle bread is a thing:

“So far back as the time of Henry III., we find mention made of wassel bread, cockle bread and bread of treet corresponding with the three sorts of bread now in use, viz. white, wheaten and household bread.”

The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, p157, 1852.

Cocklety bread has also been recorded in playground chants:

“The term ” Cockelty ” is still heard among our children at play. One of them squats on its haunches with the hands joined beneath the thighs, and being lifted by a couple of others who have hold by the bowed arms, it is swung backwards and forwards and bumped on the ground or against the wall, while continuing the words, “This is the way we make cockelty bread.”- -Robinson’s Whitby Glossary, p. 40.”

“The traditional games of England, Scotland, and Ireland” 1894-1898, Alice Bertha Gomme, p75

Delighted with this quaint image, I pursued Cockle Bread further – and immediately regretted that decision.

“The traditional games of England, Scotland, and Ireland” 1894-1898, Alice Bertha Gomme, p74

And before I knew it, I was learning that as an extension of this ribaldry, sometimes dough was actually kneaded this way, and then baked and fed to the person whom the girl wished to enamour.

ANYHOO……..Spice buns!

Cookeels

Makes 16

These soft, pillowy buns were enjoyed throughout the season of Lent. Unlike the more famous Good Friday buns, they contained no fruit and neither were they marked with a cross. One of the above anecdotes mentioned allspice as a seasoning, but neither of the recipes do, so we’re going to stick to nutmeg. Usually mixed with several other spices, the fact that these buns have just a single spice adds to their appeal. The enrichment of the egg, milk and butter makes the dough exceedingly soft and the baked bun incredibly tender of crumb. Delicious warm from the oven and freshly buttered, you can also enjoy them toasted with butter and cheese.

150ml water
150ml milk
1 large egg
100g butter
100g caster sugar
pinch of salt
450g strong white flour
2tsp ground nutmeg
1 sachet fast-action yeast

1 large egg yolk
2-3tbs milk

  • Put the dry ingredients into a food processor and blitz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
  • Tip the mixture into a mixing bowl.
  • Zap the water in the microwave for 1 minute. This should heat it but without boiling.
  • Pour the milk into the hot water and stir. It should now be warm. Add the egg to the warm milk mixture and whisk thoroughly.
  • Pour the milk mixture into the other ingredients and mix until the dough comes together. It will be very soft – too soft to knead – but it will become manageable once risen.
  • Cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place to rise for 1 hour.
  • Cover a large baking tray, or shallow oven shelf for preference, in baking parchment.
  • Once the dough has risen, dust your work surface well with flour.
  • Tip the dough out onto the flour and pat gently to deflate. Dust the surface with flour, then, with the help of a dough scraper, lift and fold the sides inwards and pat down. Continue the dusting and folding until the dough is firm enough to handle. The first time I made this, I put too much liquid in, but it only took three lots of folding to make it manageable.
  • Pat the dough into a square. it will be roughly 20cm, but if it’s larger, that’s fine.
  • Cut the dough into 16 pieces. The easiest way is to cut your square of dough into quarters, then cut each quarter into four.
  • For each piece, fold in the edges of the dough, flip it over and roll into a ball under your hand.
  • Set the shaped dough onto your prepared baking sheet. The dough will spread during rising/baking to the size of a teacake, so space them well apart (7-8cm).
  • When all the dough has been shaped, cover lightly and set aside to rise for 30 minutes.
  • Heat the oven to 180°C/160°C Fan.
  • Whisk together the egg yolk and the milk and brush this glaze over your risen buns. You can use just milk if you prefer.
  • Bake your buns for 20 minutes, turning the baking tray/shelf around after 10 minutes to help with even colouring.
  • Remove from the oven and immediately cover with a clean cloth. This will trap the steam and ensure your buns are soft and pillowy when cooled.
  • Store in an airtight container when cold.

Fried Bread and Marmalade

20th century, Bread, Preserves

In the old days, when religious observance was a greater part of daily lives, as Lent approached, efforts were made to use up larder items in preparation for the coming period of abstemiousness. Bacon and eggs were eaten on Collop Monday, Pancakes (using the resulting bacon grease) were enjoyed on Shrove Tuesday, and Lent itself began on Ash Wednesday.

In the past few weeks I have been looking through various manuscript sources in order to find a shiny, new old pancake recipe for you to try, but, alas, my efforts have been thwarted at every turn due to the adorable (!) British quirk of different regions giving a specific dish their own local name.

I scrolled through the thousands of recipes in my spreadsheets and compiled the following list to look at in more detail:

  • Court pancakes
  • Million pancakes
  • Pancake pudding
  • Pancake wafers
  • Paper pancakes
  • Temple pancakes
  • Creeping pancakes

In Every. Single. Case. they turned out to be variations of the recipe most popularly known as A Quire of Pancakes: lots of small, thin, rich, cream-based pancakes stacked in a pile, with sugar strewn between each layer, and served like a cake slice (see image below).

Quire of Pancakes, 1714
Quire of Pancakes, 1714

So I’ve decided to go in a completely different direction and bringing you a recipe for Collop Monday, or alternately Shrove Tuesday breakfast, and in doing so, recording for posterity a dish I know my mother ate in her childhood: Fried bread and Marmalade.

When I first heard of this as a child myself, I thought it sounded awful, but as an adult, I have come to appreciate the delicious interplay of salty, sweet, bitter and smoke.

Slices of bread were added to the pan after bacon was fried and mopped up the remaining fat and in the process become toasted from the heat of the pan. They were fishes out and spread with marmalade and handed to my mother and her siblings.

Many modern packs of bacon, especially at the lower prices, are injected with water to artificially plump up the weight. When fried, it splutters and spits and seeps a milky liquid that is visually very unappealing. Back in the day – we ‘re talking 1930s here – the bacon would have been purchased from the butcher by the slice, possibly even home-cured by the butcher himself, and the dry-brining method employed drew out moisture from, rather than injecting it into, the slabs of belly pork used for bacon. In the pan the fat would render down into a clear liquid, filled with the smoky, salty flavour of the bacon. When cold, the fat would solidify and could be kept for use, but if this were impractical (it not yet being the age of ubiquitous refrigeration in the home) to use it up at once, it was easy to mop up the fat with slices of bread, which then became imbued with this flavour bomb as an alternative to the (more expensive) butter. It is easy to overdo the bacon fat, and it doesn’t take much for the bread to become overly greasy, so marmalade was a perfect foil to combat this: the bitterness of the Seville oranges and the sweetness of the jelly providing delicious contrasts to the hot, crunchy, salty, smoky bacon fat.

Back then, this snack was born from frugal-by-necessity living. My mother grew up in a one-income household. Nothing was left to waste. But that’s not a reason not to enjoy it today. And additionally, the level at which you enjoy it is completely adaptable – from simple to complex, the components are almost infinitely customisable according to what you have in the cupboard/fridge.

  • The Bread: Whatever you have to hand, or prefer: brown, white, pre-sliced, hand-sliced, doorstep, gluten-free, rye, sourdough… you get the idea.
  • The Bacon Fat: Kinda non-negotiable. I learned recently that Bacon grease is available to buy by the tub in the USA, and in checking online for this post I am slightly horrified to find a 9lb bucket now available to buy in the UK. If you’re a fan, then go for it, but my approach here is to be much smaller in scale – get your bacon fat from cooking bacon. Dry-cure bacon will render pure bacon fat without any white residue.
  • The Marmalade: Regular listeners will be aware of my keenness at the moment to find ways to use the various marmalades I have on hand after entering The Marmalade Awards this year. I have an embarrassment of riches on that score, but any marmalade will suffice. Use whatever you have and like. In the photographs I’ve gone with the Chilli Marmalade I made this year – classic Seville marmalade with fresh red chillies – it looks so pretty with the red flecks of chilli pepper, and the spiciness pairs well with the bacon.
  • The Bacon: Optional. If you want a more substantial snack, tuck in a few slices of your favourite. Smoke, unsmoked, back bacon, streaky bacon, gammon, ham… it’s all delicious.

Fried Bread and Marmalade

Slices of bread
Bacon fat (from dry-cure bacon/gammon)
Marmalade of choice
Bacon (optional)

  • I’m going to stray a little from the traditional preparation method. As mentioned above, the traditional method is to turn the slices of bread over in the fat in the pan, until they have both absorbed the fat and become toasted. Which is fine. Except it’s difficult to get an even colour on the bread – at least so I find. Also, I dislike having greasy fingers from the bread being fried on both sides, so I’m going to suggest the following:
    • Toast the bread in a toaster/under a grill, then spread the solidified bacon fat onto the hot toast with a knife, like butter. This way the toasting of the bread is even, it stays dry on the outside for cleaner eating, and you can easily control the amount of bacon fat used. If your bacon fat is still hot in the pan, use a pastry brush to dip in and then brush over the surface of your toast.
  • Spread your choice of marmalade onto the non-dry sides of the toast.
  • Add your bacon – or not – and enjoy.

Carrot Bread

19th century, Bread, Yeast

Personal recipe books can be quite eclectic in the mix of recipes the owner chooses to include. Quite apart from the recipes they (or if you’re a wealthy noblewoman, your scribe) include, there can also be hurried notes scribbled down on scraps of paper or the backs of envelopes, letters and cards answering requests for recipes, as well as clippings from newspapers and magazines.

This recipe was found between the pages of Catherine Ashley’s household book, dated circa 1830 (MS.995, held by The Wellcome Collection). It had been clipped from The Record, a twice-weekly religious newspaper, in January, 1847. The author, The Rev. John Lowder, had experimented with using carrots to make bread after reading an article in The Gardeners’ Chronicle in December 1846. He wrote to the editor of The Record in the hope that by sharing his findings, his clergy brethren might find the results useful for their own poor and needy.

The article in The Gardeners’ Chronicle had detailed an open correspondence between The Right Hon. T.F.Kennedy, Paymaster General for the Irish Civil Service and Henry Labouchere, the then Secretary of State for Ireland in the government of Lord John Russell (1846-1852). In it, Kennedy suggested that experiments done in Austria on the supplementing of flour with beetroot to make bread might help with the (then early stages) of the potato disaster in Ireland. Growing beetroot on just one acre, he maintained, would produce a crop of £30 value, with a clear profit of £15 to the grower, and provide valuable supplementary nutrition  to the Irish poor, being of a much higher value than potatoes. Although noble, this idea falls at the first hurdle because the poor in Ireland were eating potatoes precisely because they did not have access to the flour needed for this scheme to work.

Parsnips were also used in experiments and were deemed excellent, but carrots were not, with the reason being given as carrots were “much less palatable.”

Enter the Rev. Lowder with his own efforts, whereby he succeeded in producing delicious carrot bread by cooking and pureeing the carrots first, whereas the original experiments had been done by grating the raw vegetables.

The recipe is simple: equal weights of (pureed, cooked) carrot and flour mixed together, and then continued with the usual bread-making method. I thought this almost too good to be true and put it to the test by adding only salt and yeast. The result is the loaf picture above. I added no water, bar the 2-3 tablespoons of carrot water needed to get the carrots pureed. In all honesty, it looked too moist in the initial mixing, but I had faith and decided to wait and see what the first rise made of it. The resulting dough after an hour was gloriously light and very lithe and needed only the briefest of shaping before putting it into a 20cm/8″ square tin. Another rise of 30 minutes was followed with a 40 minute bake. The loaf was cooled on a rack overnight before being sliced.

I appreciate that the use of white bread flour is probably of a finer quality than that employed by the good Reverend Lowder in his experimentation, but I made that call in order to give the recipe its best chance of success.

Shortly after this recipe was published (1848) Reverend Lowder moved half a world away, with his wife and five children, to China, after being appointed Chaplain of Shanghai. Heartrendingly, he would perish in a swimming tragedy shortly thereafter (September, 1849) at the age of just thirty-nine.

Carrot Bread sliced – plain (top) and toasted (bottom)

As can be seen in the photo above, the colour of the crumb is glorious. Given the vibrancy, it’s surprising that there isn’t more carrot flavour. The texture is soft, with a slight chew, similar to potato bread. When toasted, the colour changes very little – the darkening of the crust around the edges being the main indicator. There is a suspicion of roasted carrot in the flavour, and if you’re eating it with anything other than butter, you might miss it altogether. Overall, I’m really liking this new (to me) recipe – it will definitely be making a regular appearance in this household.

Carrot Bread

Since proportions of flour and carrot are the only specifications, although I’ve not tried it yet, I see no reason why carrots left over from a previous meal might not be successfully used in this recipe, adding plain water if necessary for a smooth puree. If the total of puree + flour is less than 700g, then only one sachet of yeast would be needed, and half the salt. Some accent spices could also be added, such as caraway or cumin seeds.

500g carrots, peeled and sliced
500g strong white flour
10g salt
2 sachets fast action yeast

  • Put the carrots into a saucepan, cover with water and bring to a simmer.
  • Cook until tender all the way through – between 20-30 minutes, depending on the size of the carrot pieces.
  • When cooked, strain (reserving the liquid) and puree in a liquidiser or using a stick blender. Add a little of the cooking water if the carrots aren’t blending easily.
  • When pureed and smooth, set aside for 10 minutes to cool slightly, in order to not adversely affect the yeast.
  • When just warm, put the carrots and the rest of the ingredients into a bowl and bring together as a dough. Knead either by hand or using a dough hook for 10 minutes.
  • Cover and allow to rise for 1 hour.
  • Tip out the risen dough onto a lightly floured surface and gently deflate.
  • Shape and add to your tin of choice. I used a 20cm/8 inch square tin lined with baking parchment. If you use a different shaped tin, you might have to adjust the cooking time accordingly.
  • Allow to rise for a further 30 minutes.
  • Heat the oven to 220°C/200°C Fan.
  • Just before putting your loaf in the oven, cut some slashes in the top crust to prevent it rising  unevenly during the initial ‘oven spring’. Bake for 35-40 minutes until well risen and with the crust firm. You might want to remove your loaf from the tin and return it to the oven to bake for another 5-10 minutes in order to really crisp up the crust.
  • Cool on a wire rack.
  • Slice when cold.

Marmalade Cake

20th century, Cakes, Large Cakes, Preserves

The recipe I have for you today comes from the classic and ever-reliable Be-Ro baking booklet.


My copy dates from somewhere between 1930 and 1950 (going on the fashions worn in the illustrations), and contains tried and tested recipes both for the everyday and special occasions.

I chose this recipe for a number of reasons:

  • It tastes absolutely delicious.
  • It’s a genuine store-cupboard cake, requiring everyday ingredients.
  • It is an excellent way to use up last year’s marmalade to make way for this year’s batch(es).
  • It is an excellent way to start making use of this year’s batch of marmalade, bursting with freshness.
  • It can be varied with whatever preserves you have on hand (within reason).

It being marmalade season, I have recently been preserving up a storm and entering some marmalades in the annual Marmalade Awards competition.

The method I used was extremely small-batch, but still provided me with more than the single jar required for each entry. Now, this year I entered six categories. I have six lots of extra marmalade. So I was KEENLY in the market for some way to increase marmalade consumption.

Enter the Be-Ro booklet and its recipe for Marmalade Cake with its short list of simple ingredients: flour, fat, sugar, marmalade, eggs, milk.

I’ve increased the amounts of each ingredient to 1.5 times the original quantities, because I had almost exactly that amount of Stork baking margarine in the fridge, and the first cake was so successful I made a second with a different marmalade and used butter, which was just as nice.

A square lime marmalade cake with two pieces cut off and displayed, on a wooden cutting board.

The first cake was made with lime marmalade (see above pic) and was very delicate in flavour and the cake was soft of crumb. The second cake was made with Seville Orange marmalade (see recipe for Dundee Marmalade here), and was just as delicious, possibly even more so. The striking difference was the aroma when the cake was cut – it was like a cloud of intense orange that wafted up. Amazing. I would venture that you could also substitute the marmalade for other jams or preserves, with the caveat that it should be one of the stronger and preferably tart-flavoured fruit: apricot, plum, damson, etc. because the sharpness of the fruit is a delicious contrast to the sweetness of the crumb.

This isn’t the flashiest, most exotic bake you’ll make, but it is easy and very fine-tasting and can be whipped up in about an hour start to finish from the contents of your cupboard/fridge.

Marmalade Cake

This is for the enlarged mix, and requires a 20cm square tin.

170g butter/Stork
170g sugar
170g marmalade
340g plain flour + 1tbs baking powder OR 340g self-raising flour
3 large eggs
80ml milk

  • Heat the oven to 170°C, 150°C Fan.
  • Grease and line a 20cm square tin with baking parchment.
  • Cream the fat and sugar together until light and fluffy.
  • Add the marmalade and mix thoroughly.
  • Sift together the baking powder and flour if using. Otherwise, sift the self-raising flour.
  • Whisk together the eggs and milk.
  • Alternately add these two ingredient mixtures to the mixture in the bowl, stirring, until everything is fully combined.
  • Pour the cake mixture into the prepared tin and smooth evenly.
  • Bake for a total of 45 minutes, turning the tin around after 25 minutes to ensure even baking.
  • Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin, then carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
  • Store in an airtight container.

Christmas Spiced Butter

20th century, 21st Century, Pastry, Sweet Pastry, Tracklements

With only a month to go, I recently realised it’s high time I got my act into gear vis-à-vis some festive recipes.

I have for you here something that I’ve been making for the past few years and, with spectacular timing, only remembering about it come the 24th or so, which is far too late to go about suggesting people add to their military campaign-esque festive ToDo list.

I initially got the idea a few years ago whilst making a batch of Niter Kibbeh, the very aromatic Ethiopian spiced butter used in making the red lentil stew Misir Wat.

It is butter that is flavoured with seasonal spices, and is a doddle to make. I use clarified butter in the form of a tin of ghee, because delicious though browned butter is, the milk solids are easily burned. I simmer – although that is rather too strong a word for sitting on heat 1 of the hob, so perhaps ‘infuse’ is more fitting – whole spices and citrus peels and then allow the flavours to infuse overnight as the butter cools. The use of whole spices keeps the spicing soft – although I have opted to add in ground spices if the whole ones are unavailable. The only downside of using ground spices is that they will speckle the butter, being too small to strain out. Depending on your use of the finished butter, this may not be an issue. Next day, I slowly warm the mixture and, when melted, strain out the solids and pour the beautifully aromatic and flavourful butter back into the tin in arrived in, for ease of storage.

You are then free to use it wherever you see fit in your festive baking.

Brandy Butter and Spiced Hard Sauce: These are rich and delicious accompaniments to both mice pies and Christmas pudding. Equal quantities of icing sugar and butter are whisked with brandy, or indeed any alcohol of your choice, and/or vanilla to produce a light and frothy mixture that you can spoon onto your bakes where it will gently melt and turn into a sauce.

Mincemeat: In case you haven’t seen the recipe, my guilt-free Mincemeat (based on Hannah Glasse’s 1747 recipe) offers all the delights of traditional mincemeat, but without suet, fat or any added sugar and is both vegetarian and vegan. Delicious as it is, you can elevate it to luxury levels by adding a little Spiced Christmas Butter for added richness.

Pastry: Using Spiced Christmas Butter in pastry  adds a whole new dimension to your mince pies and other Christmas fare such as this Welsh cranberry tart.

Shortbread: Why not try your favourite shortbread variation using festive spiced butter?

What Spices Do I Need?

Basically, anything you like. Whilst this might not seem very helpful, I say it to illustrate just how much free reign you can have with this. Either stick to a more traditional mix (see below) or spice it up a little (excuse the pun) with some unusual bits and bobs. You can’t really go wrong, as using whole spices means there’s only ever a gentle flavouring.

A traditional mix might include:

  • cinnamon sticks
  • allspice berries
  • blades of mace
  • whole nutmegs (sliced)
  • cloves
  • orange peel
  • lemon peel
  • sliced ginger (fresh or dried)

Other items you may want to use include:

  • cardamom pods – both green and black
  • star anise
  • aniseeds
  • black pepper
  • cubeb pepper
  • long pepper
  • grains of paradise
  • vanilla
  • saffron
  • licorice sticks
  • caraway seeds
  • coriander seeds
  • cumin seeds
  • rosepetals

All of the spices should be whole, wherever possible. Use anything from 1tsp to 1tbs to your taste.

Spiced butter with different whole spices
Another version of spiced butter, this time with grains of paradise, cubeb pepper and aniseed.

Dietary Guidelines

As ghee has had all the milk solids removed, I would venture to suggest that it might even be suitable for the lactose intolerant.

If you are vegan, you can make your own version using solid coconut oil. If you’re not a fan of the accompanying coconut aroma, this odourless brand is available to order online.

Christmas Spiced Butter

I rarely recommend any particular brand, but in this instance I strongly urge you to seek out (it’s not that hard to find – most supermarkets carry this distinctive green and gold tin) East End ghee. It has a heady, perfumed aroma in its natural state, which greatly enhances the end product.

1 x 600g tin of East End ghee.
3-4 cinnamon sticks
1tbs whole cloves
1tbs allspice berries
4 blades of mace
2 whole nutmegs – sliced
thinly peeled skin of 1 orange
thinly peeled skin of 1 lemon
5 slices of fresh/dried ginger
5 star anise

  1. Put everything into a small saucepan.
  2. Cover and set on the lowest heat possible on your stove/hob.
  3. Leave to infuse for 1-2 hours.
  4. Switch off the heat and leave overnight.
  5. Next day, warm slowly over very low heat until melted, then strain the solids out by pouring through a sieve.
  6. When the butter has completely drained, pour it back into the tin.
  7. Label and store in the cupboard for use.

Gossiping Cakes

17th century, 18th century, Biscuits, Cakes, Large Cakes, Yeast

I have a confession to make. I chose these recipes because I loved the idea of women baking cakes specifically for having a get-together and swapping gossip. Alas, that’s not where these cakes originate, but the truth just as interesting.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have spent quite a considerable amount of time cataloguing household manuscripts that have been digitised by various libraries around the world. Obviously, there is going to be a certain degree of repetition of the most popular recipes, but there are also those that stand out as original either by name or by ingredient, etc. Whenever I come across such a recipe, I mark it in the spreadsheet with an asterisk, so when I’m looking back over the thousands of recipes, those asterisked ones are easily highlighted as worthy of a second look. And for the other type of recipes, such as the 200+ recipes simply entitled “A cake”, I’ll get to looking at you in all your (presumed) variety  soon, but to be blunt, you’re pretty low on the ToDo list.

The first recipe I found was this one, dated early 18th century (1738), at the Wellcome Collection.

Recipe for Goseping Cakes The Best Way, from the manuscript of Rebecca Tallamy, (1738), MS4759, Wellcome Collection

It appears to be a spiced variation of shortbread, and obviously one to make in quantity, because the yield of the recipe is over 100 biscuits. It’s demonstrating one of the many interpretations of the word ‘cake’, in this case meaning small, circular biscuits. The last line also caught my eye, because it recommends using equal quantities of butter and flour to make them “very good”.

Regular listeners will have read about my shortbread variation testing a few months ago, where the ratio of butter to flour can range from 1:3 to 1:2, so the assertion that 1:1 is the best, had me intrigued.

This recipe was very much on the back burner until I came across another recipe, similarly named, while indexing the digitised manuscripts at the National Library of Scotland.

Recipe for a Gossops Cake, from MS103093966.23, (1660-1699), National Library of Scotland

This recipe is in a manuscript older by almost a century (1660-1699), and differs in that it contains fruit, and is a large yeasted cake – exceedingly large, going by the peck/14lb/9kg of flour required – the term cake being used in this instance more akin to our modern usage.

To delve deeper into this mystery, I turned to the internet, and found the following passage:

Christening cake traditions, from “Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme 1686-87”, John Aubrey, James Britten, 1881, p65

This threw up the question: What is a Gossiping? And so I went hunting in the Oxford English Dictionary which I learned that a Gossiping is  a christening, or christening feast, derived and corrupted from “Godsibb”, which is an old English word for Godparent.

Not entirely relevant, but interesting nontheless, the oldest usage of Godshib I found was over a thousand years ago in Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, or the Sermon of the Wolf to the English, a sermon given by Wulfstan II, Bishop of Worcester and Archbishop of York (d. 1023) in 1014:

“And godsibbas and godbearn to fela man forspilde wide gynd þas þeode toeacan oðran ealles to manegan þe man unscyldgige forfor ealles to wide.”

Trans: And too many godparents and godchildren have been killed widely through-out this nation, in addition to entirely too many other innocent people who have been destroy­ed entirely too widely.”

Later usages of the word referred to a gathering of women/midwives when a woman was in labour, and hence to the modern usage.

So with a history stretching back many centuries, the account of christening traditions at Wendlebury would appear to neatly explain the differences between our two recipes: a large cake was presented to the father – presumably for all his hard work in the proceedings *eyeroll* – and the smaller cakes were shared with the guests.

So let’s get on with some gosseping!

A Gossop’s Cake

This is a fruited, lightly spiced and yeast-raised cake. If you’re British, it’s like an enriched teacake: delicious fresh, delicious toasted, and delicious either way with butter and a slab of cheese (but better with toasted). I’ve scaled the recipe down to make for a modest sized cake, but you can always double the recipe if it turns out to be a favourite.

315g plain flour
135g raisins
25g caster sugar
1tsp ground nutmeg
1tsp ground cinnamon
1tsp ground ginger
50g unsalted butter
150ml single cream
100ml water
1½tsp rosewater
1 sachet fast-acting yeast

single cream to glaze

  • Plump the raisins: put the raisins in a saucepan and cover with water. Warm gently on a low heat for 10 minutes while the dough mixes. Strain and pat dry.
  • Sift together the flour, yeast, sugar and spices.
  • Put the butter, cream, water and rosewater into a small pan and warm gently over low heat just until the butter has melted.
  • Put all ingredients except the raisins into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook and mix on slow until the dough comes together, then continue to knead for 10 minutes until smooth.
  • Add in the plumped raisins and mix on slow to combine.
  • Grease and line a tall, 20cm cake tin, preferably loose bottomed, with parchment.
  • Form the dough into a smooth cake and place in the prepared tin.
  • Set aside to rise until doubled in size. The enrichments to the dough (cream/sugar/fruit) will impact the rise, which is why there is only a single rise for this cake, thus taking advantage of the initial vigorousness of the yeast.
  • Heat the oven to 190°C, 170°C Fan.
  • When the cake has risen, gently brush the surface with single cream, and bake for 30-40 minutes until well risen and golden brown.
  • Cool the cake for 10 minutes in the tin, then remove and set on a wire rack to cool completely.
  • Store in an airtight container.

Goseping Cakes The Best Way

I’ve opted for the proportions where butter = flour because, contrary to my expectations, it really did taste much better that with just half the amount of butter.

250g plain flour
250g unsalted butter
125g caster sugar
1tsp ground nutmeg
1tsp ground mace
1.5tsp rosewater
1 large egg yolk
30ml white wine

1tbs caster sugar for sprinkling

  • Put the dry ingredients into the bowl of a food processor.
  • Cube the butter and add to the dry ingredients.
  • Blitz the mixture a few times until it resembles breadcrumbs.
  • Whisk together the yolk, wine and rosewater.
  • Add the wet ingredients to the dry and blitz until the mixture comes together in a soft dough.
  • Line a 20cm square tin with parchment paper.
  • Turn the dough out onto parchment paper.
  • Press the dough out evenly and smooth over.
  • Chill in the freezer for 20 minutes.
  • Heat the oven to 160°C, 140°C Fan.
  • Poke holes all over the surface with a fork or using a cocktail stick, in the manner of shortbread.
  • Bake for 30 minutes, turning the tin around after 15 minutes to ensure even baking.
  • Remove from the oven and turn off the heat. Sprinkle the caster sugar over the hot shortbread.
  • Cut the shortbread into pieces using a thin bladed knife or metal dough scraper.
  • Return the tin to the cooling oven until cold, to ‘dry out’.
  • When cold, store in an airtight container.

Cheese biscuits

20th century, 21st Century, Biscuits

Three recipes for you this week, all originating from a single idea. I thought I’d take the opportunity to show how it is possible to play with recipes you already know and love, and adapt a favourite one to different flavourings and pairings.

I was catching up on the latest season of the Great British Bake Off the other day, and for Biscuit Week the bakers were asked to make Viennese Whirls for their signature bake. I made a similar biscuit in Season Two – except I called them Melting Moments – so I was interested to see what variations this season’s bakers would bring to the table.

The range was wide and the flavour combinations a mix of both unusual and familiar (you can read more details on the specific flavourings/pairings here), and I got to pondering what I would have made. I think I would probably have gone savoury, and what better place to start than with my original recipe, and seeing if it could be tweaked to a more salty flavouring.

Obviously, the main stumbling block is the Melting Moments I made were sweet. Messing about with other recipes I’ve found that substituting cheese for the sugar on a 1:1 basis can get you a long way down the savoury route. I didn’t want the biscuits to spread much, and I also didn’t want the cheese to clump together and produce blobs, so rather than grating fresh from a block, I chose to use already-finely-grated Parmesan cheese (still fresh, just not grated by me). Test Batch 1 (a half batch of the original quantities – another Top Tip when you’re experimenting – no need for a full batch of anything until you get it right) was a straight substitution of cheese for sugar. To compliment the cheese, I also added dry mustard and ground nutmeg, as well as salt.

The results were cheesy-ish but also a little greasy, so Test Batch 2 involved more cheese (for taste) and more cornflour (to help with the greasiness). Batch 1 also didn’t hold their shape very well, but when I was looking at the tweaked ingredient proportions, I saw they were veering close to those of the best kind of shortbread (I made so many batches the proportions are burned into my brain), and so I opted to bake the dough in a shallow-sided pan, just like the shortbread. I didn’t want to dough to blister or rise up, so I poked holes in the dough, also like shortbread. The baking was also done long and low, and the result was absolutely delicious: strong cheese flavour, with the subtle hints of the mustard and the nutmeg rounding it out. The long, slow baking had toasted the cheese particles, which now had the bonus of adding little nuggets of crunchiness to the texture. Finally, cutting the cooked dough into pieces hot from the oven, then putting the tin back in as the oven cooled, made for a gloriously toasted flavour and appearance. It was an amazingly savoury, cheesy, shortbread, but a bit far from a Viennese Whirl.

In addition, the original prompt required a filling of some sort, so I went back to the drawing board and recalled a recipe for a favourite pull-apart bread flavoured with walnuts and blue cheese. After toying with the idea of adding the nuts to the biscuit filling, I opted for adding them to the biscuit dough, and making the filling with blue cheese.

Test Batch 2 was much better in terms of crumbly texture, but the flavour of the walnuts wasn’t really there. So for what would be the final Test Batch, I reduced the Parmesan cheese to keep it savoury but not intrusive, and toasted the walnuts. I kept the amount of cornflour the same, since walnuts have their own oil and this would also need to be absorbed in order to keep the biscuit texture. The result was just what I was going for: crumbly melt in the mouth biscuit texture, robust walnut taste with just a hint of Parmesan.

The last step was to sort out the filling. I opted for Saint Agur, which is a soft and creamy, relatively mild blue cheese, and mixed it with some cream cheese to make it pipe-able. These biscuits lack the piped form of traditional Melting Moments, so adding the swirl in the filling is a neat compromise. If you’re a blue cheese fiend, then use stronger-flavoured cheeses by all means – you might have to work a little harder to get them blended with the cream cheese. I don’t usually recommend brands, but Philadelphia cream cheese has the firmness and creaminess that is just perfect here. If you use a different cream cheese and the result seems a little watery or not as dense as you would like, you can firm it up by placing it directly onto 4-6 folded layers of kitchen roll (in a sealable plastic box or similar) and chilling in the fridge overnight. The excess moisture will be drawn out into the paper towel, firming the cheese mixture up and making the mix easier to pipe. If you don’t have the time to do this, just use your cream/blue cheese mixture as a dip. There is also a Saint Agur Blue Crème product with the cream cheese already mixed in. It is very smooth indeed, but too soft to pipe. Perfect to use as a dip, though.

So there we are. Arguably three different recipes (yes, yes – I know the dip is a bit of a stretch, recipe-wise) from a single inspiration. I do hope you try them, and then have fun experimenting with tweaking your own recipe favourites.

Cheese Shortbread with blue cheese topping and dip
Cheese Shortbread with blue cheese topping and dip

Cheese Shortbread

125g plain flour
50g cornflour
125g unsalted butter – chilled
½tsp salt
½tsp ground nutmeg
½tsp yellow mustard powder
50g ground Parmesan cheese

  • Heat the oven to 160°C, 140°C Fan.
  • Line a shallow baking tin with parchment. I used one of dimensions 26cm x 18cm, but a 20cm square would also work.
  • Put all of the ingredients into a food processor and blitz in brief bursts until the mixture comes together in a soft paste.
  • Press the paste into the prepared tin and smooth over. Using a skewer or a cocktail stick, poke holes evenly over the whole surface area.
  • Bake for 30 minutes, turning the tin around halfway through to ensure even baking.
  • When baked, turn off the oven, remove the shortbread and cut into pieces. I prefer to use my metal dough scraper, which is super thin, to get nice, clean, sharp cuts.
  • Put the shortbread back into the cooling oven, to finish off.
  • When cold, store in an airtight container.

Walnut & Blue Cheese Melting Moments

30g walnuts
125g plain flour
50g cornflour
125g unsalted butter – chilled
½tsp salt
30g ground Parmesan cheese

  • Toast the walnuts:
    • Heat the oven to 200°C, 180°C Fan.
    • Lay the nuts on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
    • Bake for 8 minutes, turning the tray around halfway through to ensure even browning.
    • Set aside until cool, then chop with a knife into small pieces.
  • Put the remaining ingredients into a food processor and blitz in brief bursts until the mixture comes together in a soft paste.
  • Tip the mixture out onto a piece of parchment and knead in the chopped walnuts.
  • Lay clingfilm over the dough and roll it out thinly (5mm).
  • Slide the sheet of covered dough onto a chopping board and freeze for 20 minutes. The dough is very soft and chilling it hard will make cutting the biscuits out and transferring them to the baking sheet much easier and with no loss of shape.
  • Turn the oven to 160°C, 140°C Fan.
  • Cut the dough into biscuits using a plain 5cm round cutter. Lay the biscuits on a baking sheet covered with baking parchment. There’s little to no spreading during baking, so you can lay them as close as 1cm from each other.
  • Poke holes in the centre of your biscuits using a cocktails stick. Or not. I tried both ways, and to be honest, there wasn’t really a difference. Arguably the biscuits with the perforations, as in the photo at the top, maybe look a little more aesthetically pleasing, but not by much. You choose.
  • Bake for 30 minutes, turning the baking sheet around halfway through to ensure even baking.
  • Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the tins. The biscuits are rather friable when warm, so don’t be too eager to move them.
  • Store in an airtight container when cold.

Blue Cheese Filling/Dip

150g (1 pack) Saint Agur blue cheese
280g (1 large box) Philadelphia cream cheese

  • Remove both ingredients from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature.
  • Crumble the blue cheese into a bowl and mash with a fork or the back of a spoon until smooth.
  • Add half the cream cheese and mix thoroughly, making sure there are no lumps.
  • Add the rest of the cream cheese and mix until smooth and fully incorporated.
  • Fill a piping bag fitted with a 5mm star nozzle, and pipe onto half your biscuits.
  • Top with the remaining biscuits and arrange on a serving plate.
  • Use any remaining filling as a dip by adding a little cream/creme fraiche, yogurt until the desired consistency is reached.