Around Britain in five cakes
The chain coffee shops found in every British city offer French-inspired croissants and American-style brownies. But don’t we Brits have our own teatime treats, our own local specialities? In a gloriously gluttonous journey from the Cornish cream tea to the Dundee’s bakeries, I decided to find out – and discovered that many of our native cakes, tarts and buns are very much alive and well.
Where better to start my travels than somewhere close to my own doorstep? The Original Maids Of Honour bakery and teashop (formerly Newens bakery) is a pleasant leafy walk from Kew Gardens station.
Legend has it that Henry VIII, snaffling one of the little pastries that were being served to Anne Boleyn and her ladies-in-waiting, proclaimed that from that day forward they should be named in honour of those ladies. He also demanded that the recipe be handed over to him and kept under lock and key in Richmond Palace.
Whatever its origins, the recipe has been a favourite in the area for hundreds of years. By the early 18th century the secret was in the hands of a baker in Richmond; shortly afterwards it came into the possession of a family called Newens – until recently the proprietors of the eponymous premises on Kew Road.
The teashop is a step back in time: slightly shabby, dark wood furniture, wrought-iron light fittings, blue-andwhite Spode china – a cultivated image of down-at-heel gentility. And, waiting modestly in the background, more Jane Seymour than Anne Boleyn, a large tray of Maids Of Honour.
I was so preoccupied with writing notes that I scoffed mine without taking any notice and had to have another. ‘Scoffed’ is the wrong word: it was too small and delicate for that – about 5cm across and 3cm high – with soft, flaky puff pastry and a custardy filling. Served slightly warm, it was entirely delicious and took considerable willpower not to order a third.
The name does it no favours, because not many of us speak Cornish these days. Heavy in this context has nothing to do with weight; it comes from the cry hevva, meaning a shoal of fish. A lookout, known as the huer, used to give this cry when he spotted a dark-red shadow under the water, indicating the presence of pilchards. He also sounded a horn (setting up a hue and cry), then, by means of hand signals, directed the fishermen to the spot where they should cast their nets. There’s still a former huer’s hut on the cliff above Newquay: it’s probably 700 years old, round and squat, with an external staircase and a square chimney described as ‘typically Cornish late medieval’, a style of architecture about which I can tell you very little.
The point about all this, as far as my cake investigations were concerned, was that, on hearing the cry, the womenfolk knew that their husbands would soon be home for their tea and quickly threw a hevva cake together. It was a simple recipe whose charm lay in the fact that it was decorated with a diamond criss-cross to represent the fishing net.
If you’ve never come across one, it’s hard to describe exactly what a Welsh cake is – not quite a scone, not quite a cake. Made from a simple dough – fat rubbed into flour and bound with eggs – like all griddle cakes it was once a substitute for bread in homes that had no oven. It’s not kneaded, just pulled together, rolled out into a circle about 5cm in diameter and 1cm deep, and baked on a bakestone, or in a heavy frying pan for a few minutes on each side.
What you put into the dough, of course, makes all the difference. Jo Roberts, of Fabulous Welshcakes in Cardiff Bay, swears by self-raising flour, salted butter, and sultanas instead of the traditional currants, because they are plumper and moister.
Maybe it’s because griddle cooking is rare nowadays, but they have a considerable nostalgia value: people in their 40s come into Jo’s shop and say, ‘Ooh, it’s like my nana’s kitchen.’ T
hey date back to the days when people cooked with a cauldron over an open fire. They were once popular in miners’ lunch boxes: with their high-fat and high-sugar content they are a great energy booster and helped to keep the men going during a gruelling 12-hour shift. If you fancy trying your hand, a bakestone about the size of a dinner plate is ideal. Cast-iron ones are hard to come by these days; you may have to make do with steel or, if the worst comes to the worst, a cast-iron frying pan.
The story goes that the Bakewell pudding was created by accident at The Rutland Arms. A waitress who had been called to help out in the kitchens made a mistake: she forgot to stir her egg mixture into the pastry for a strawberry tart, and instead spread it on top of the jam in the pastry case. The landlady of The Rutland gave the recipe to a Mrs Wilson, who lived in what is now the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop. A classic was born.
This story is disputed by some – the question of whose ‘original’ was the most original was a touchy one round the town. What was not in doubt, however, was that Mrs Wilson set up shop in her own home, selling the puddings that made Bakewell famous. But the real mystery to me was that Bakewell pudding was still made almost exclusively in Bakewell, while Bakewell tart is everywhere. How did that come about?
Richard Young, who has made a study of early Bakewell pudding recipes, blames Mrs Beeton. Her Book Of Household Management, published in 1861, included a recipe for Bakewell pudding that she described as ‘very rich’. It contained puff pastry, jam and the eggs, sugar and butter that go to make a custard, but she added an ounce of almonds, ‘which should be well pounded’ – this would have made the custard more solid.
What it boils down to, Richard went on, is that Bakewell tart was almost certainly never invented as such. And, as anyone who has tried them both will agree, it has little in common with its custardy ancestor.
Back at the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop, the puddings are still made by hand to Mrs Wilson’s recipe. That means a puff-pastry base, a layer of strawberry jam and a topping of eggs, almonds, sugar and butter. The absence of flour keeps it like a custard rather than a cake mix. ‘It does set,’ says manager Jemma Beagrie, ‘but it’s a sort of loose filling. When it’s warmed up in the oven, it oozes – it’s amazing.’ Having sampled one, I agreed wholeheartedly.
I arrived in Dundee with the preconception that nobody there made Dundee cake any more, so I had bought some from three different suppliers: one in Wales, one in Staffordshire and one in Leicestershire. But my views on Dundee cake turned out to be nonsense. One of the first shops that caught my eye was a bakery called Clark’s, and it did indeed sell Dundee cake. The boss, Alan Clark, told me about the campaign to have the cake granted Protected Geographical Indication by the European Union.
Two doors along from my B&B, Goodfellow & Steven sold a gifty version, said to be made to an Original Recipe: ‘an orange, lightly fruited cake, with its distinctive whole almond decoration on top’. So once I got there, there was no lack of opportunity to buy Dundee cake in Dundee.
According to tradition, Dundee cake was invented in the 19th century by the local marmalade maker, Keiller’s. The company is said to have created the cake as a way to use the orangey leftovers. Take a conventional sultana cake recipe, darken it with demerara sugar, add orange peel and other by-products of the marmalade process and there you are. Oh, and because you are doing business with Spain for the oranges, you have no trouble importing almonds for decoration.
Over the following weeks, I sampled five types – the three I’d already bought and the two I acquired in its home city. I’m happy to report that the Dundee-made cakes were by far the best.
A Slice Of Britain: Around The Country By Cake, by Caroline Taggart (AA Publishing, £14.99).
CORNISH HEAVY CAKE
Makes 1 thin cake
Ingredients
175g plain flour
¼ tsp fine salt
1-2 tsp ground ginger, cinnamon or mace, or a combination, to taste (optional)
40g granulated sugar
40g each of unsalted butter and lard (or 80g butter, if you prefer)
75g currants
25g-50g chopped mixed peel (optional)
about 2 tbsp milk or water
Method
Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas 5.
Lightly grease a baking sheet. Mix the flour, salt, spices (if using) and sugar together. Rub in the fat until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Mix in the other ingredients, including just enough milk or water to make a stiff dough.
On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to about 1cm thick and in a rough oval shape. Carefully lift on to the baking sheet. Make a criss-cross pattern on the top with a sharp knife.
Bake in the preheated oven for about 25-30 minutes, until golden (it won’t rise very much). Serve warm, or allow to cool, then store in an airtight container.
1 Richmond Maids of Honour
Where better to start my travels than somewhere close to my own doorstep? The Original Maids Of Honour bakery and teashop (formerly Newens bakery) is a pleasant leafy walk from Kew Gardens station.
Legend has it that Henry VIII, snaffling one of the little pastries that were being served to Anne Boleyn and her ladies-in-waiting, proclaimed that from that day forward they should be named in honour of those ladies. He also demanded that the recipe be handed over to him and kept under lock and key in Richmond Palace.
Whatever its origins, the recipe has been a favourite in the area for hundreds of years. By the early 18th century the secret was in the hands of a baker in Richmond; shortly afterwards it came into the possession of a family called Newens – until recently the proprietors of the eponymous premises on Kew Road.
The teashop is a step back in time: slightly shabby, dark wood furniture, wrought-iron light fittings, blue-andwhite Spode china – a cultivated image of down-at-heel gentility. And, waiting modestly in the background, more Jane Seymour than Anne Boleyn, a large tray of Maids Of Honour.
I was so preoccupied with writing notes that I scoffed mine without taking any notice and had to have another. ‘Scoffed’ is the wrong word: it was too small and delicate for that – about 5cm across and 3cm high – with soft, flaky puff pastry and a custardy filling. Served slightly warm, it was entirely delicious and took considerable willpower not to order a third.
2 Cornish heavy cake
The name does it no favours, because not many of us speak Cornish these days. Heavy in this context has nothing to do with weight; it comes from the cry hevva, meaning a shoal of fish. A lookout, known as the huer, used to give this cry when he spotted a dark-red shadow under the water, indicating the presence of pilchards. He also sounded a horn (setting up a hue and cry), then, by means of hand signals, directed the fishermen to the spot where they should cast their nets. There’s still a former huer’s hut on the cliff above Newquay: it’s probably 700 years old, round and squat, with an external staircase and a square chimney described as ‘typically Cornish late medieval’, a style of architecture about which I can tell you very little.
The point about all this, as far as my cake investigations were concerned, was that, on hearing the cry, the womenfolk knew that their husbands would soon be home for their tea and quickly threw a hevva cake together. It was a simple recipe whose charm lay in the fact that it was decorated with a diamond criss-cross to represent the fishing net.
3 Welsh cakes
If you’ve never come across one, it’s hard to describe exactly what a Welsh cake is – not quite a scone, not quite a cake. Made from a simple dough – fat rubbed into flour and bound with eggs – like all griddle cakes it was once a substitute for bread in homes that had no oven. It’s not kneaded, just pulled together, rolled out into a circle about 5cm in diameter and 1cm deep, and baked on a bakestone, or in a heavy frying pan for a few minutes on each side.
What you put into the dough, of course, makes all the difference. Jo Roberts, of Fabulous Welshcakes in Cardiff Bay, swears by self-raising flour, salted butter, and sultanas instead of the traditional currants, because they are plumper and moister.
Maybe it’s because griddle cooking is rare nowadays, but they have a considerable nostalgia value: people in their 40s come into Jo’s shop and say, ‘Ooh, it’s like my nana’s kitchen.’ T
hey date back to the days when people cooked with a cauldron over an open fire. They were once popular in miners’ lunch boxes: with their high-fat and high-sugar content they are a great energy booster and helped to keep the men going during a gruelling 12-hour shift. If you fancy trying your hand, a bakestone about the size of a dinner plate is ideal. Cast-iron ones are hard to come by these days; you may have to make do with steel or, if the worst comes to the worst, a cast-iron frying pan.
4 Bakewell pudding (and tart)
The story goes that the Bakewell pudding was created by accident at The Rutland Arms. A waitress who had been called to help out in the kitchens made a mistake: she forgot to stir her egg mixture into the pastry for a strawberry tart, and instead spread it on top of the jam in the pastry case. The landlady of The Rutland gave the recipe to a Mrs Wilson, who lived in what is now the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop. A classic was born.
This story is disputed by some – the question of whose ‘original’ was the most original was a touchy one round the town. What was not in doubt, however, was that Mrs Wilson set up shop in her own home, selling the puddings that made Bakewell famous. But the real mystery to me was that Bakewell pudding was still made almost exclusively in Bakewell, while Bakewell tart is everywhere. How did that come about?
Richard Young, who has made a study of early Bakewell pudding recipes, blames Mrs Beeton. Her Book Of Household Management, published in 1861, included a recipe for Bakewell pudding that she described as ‘very rich’. It contained puff pastry, jam and the eggs, sugar and butter that go to make a custard, but she added an ounce of almonds, ‘which should be well pounded’ – this would have made the custard more solid.
What it boils down to, Richard went on, is that Bakewell tart was almost certainly never invented as such. And, as anyone who has tried them both will agree, it has little in common with its custardy ancestor.
Back at the Old Original Bakewell Pudding Shop, the puddings are still made by hand to Mrs Wilson’s recipe. That means a puff-pastry base, a layer of strawberry jam and a topping of eggs, almonds, sugar and butter. The absence of flour keeps it like a custard rather than a cake mix. ‘It does set,’ says manager Jemma Beagrie, ‘but it’s a sort of loose filling. When it’s warmed up in the oven, it oozes – it’s amazing.’ Having sampled one, I agreed wholeheartedly.
5 Dundee cake
I arrived in Dundee with the preconception that nobody there made Dundee cake any more, so I had bought some from three different suppliers: one in Wales, one in Staffordshire and one in Leicestershire. But my views on Dundee cake turned out to be nonsense. One of the first shops that caught my eye was a bakery called Clark’s, and it did indeed sell Dundee cake. The boss, Alan Clark, told me about the campaign to have the cake granted Protected Geographical Indication by the European Union.
Two doors along from my B&B, Goodfellow & Steven sold a gifty version, said to be made to an Original Recipe: ‘an orange, lightly fruited cake, with its distinctive whole almond decoration on top’. So once I got there, there was no lack of opportunity to buy Dundee cake in Dundee.
According to tradition, Dundee cake was invented in the 19th century by the local marmalade maker, Keiller’s. The company is said to have created the cake as a way to use the orangey leftovers. Take a conventional sultana cake recipe, darken it with demerara sugar, add orange peel and other by-products of the marmalade process and there you are. Oh, and because you are doing business with Spain for the oranges, you have no trouble importing almonds for decoration.
Over the following weeks, I sampled five types – the three I’d already bought and the two I acquired in its home city. I’m happy to report that the Dundee-made cakes were by far the best.
A Slice Of Britain: Around The Country By Cake, by Caroline Taggart (AA Publishing, £14.99).
CORNISH HEAVY CAKE
Makes 1 thin cake Ingredients
175g plain flour
¼ tsp fine salt
1-2 tsp ground ginger, cinnamon or mace, or a combination, to taste (optional)
40g granulated sugar
40g each of unsalted butter and lard (or 80g butter, if you prefer)
75g currants
25g-50g chopped mixed peel (optional)
about 2 tbsp milk or water
Method
Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas 5.
Lightly grease a baking sheet. Mix the flour, salt, spices (if using) and sugar together. Rub in the fat until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Mix in the other ingredients, including just enough milk or water to make a stiff dough.
On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to about 1cm thick and in a rough oval shape. Carefully lift on to the baking sheet. Make a criss-cross pattern on the top with a sharp knife.
Bake in the preheated oven for about 25-30 minutes, until golden (it won’t rise very much). Serve warm, or allow to cool, then store in an airtight container.