Recipe: Delia Smith's Homemade Welsh Cakes

Happy St. David's Day to all my Welsh friends and readers. St. David's Day is the National Day in Wales and is celebrated on 1st March every year,in honour of Dewi Sant or St David, the patron saint of Wales. So, to commemorate this day, I decided to make something Welsh. 

Homemade Welsh cakes.. a real treat indeed..

Welsh cakes, also known as picau ar y maen and pice bach in Welsh language or "Griddle Cakes" in English are traditional Welsh treats. Traditionally, they are cooked on a hot bakestone (Welsh: maen), and later iron griddles are used and is now the predominant method to cook it. It is made from butter, self raising flour, sultanas/raisins and spices. To kick start our "Cook Like Delia Smith" event for March 2013, I picked a Welsh cake recipe from her website.

Delia Smith is an English cook and TV presenter, who is well-loved in the UK. According to Wiki, she is the UK's best-selling cookery author, with more than 21 million copies sold. I have been her fan for a very long time, so I suggested Delia Smith to be our March "star".

My mother-in-law gave me a 1996 version of her cookbook and it is one of the most useful cookbooks I have around the house. I also learnt a lot of basics of Western cooking from this book. I like her style because her recipes are usually quite comprehensive, so even a beginner will be able to follow a recipe easily. Here are some previous Delia Smith recipes I have tried: pavlova with fresh strawberries, fresh lemon curd, lemon curd butterfly cakes, American brownies and orange sauce.

So, back to the Welsh cakes. Luckily for me, Delia had a recipe for Welsh cakes on her website. I have eaten Welsh cakes several times (in Wales), so I had a rough idea how it was supposed to taste and look like. Circular in shape and about 5mm thick, I would describe the texture as a cross between a soft cookie, shortbread and cake. I was very pleased with the homemade ones that I made in under 30 minutes and my kids absolutely loved them. I made half the recipe, which yield 14 Welsh cakes and they were all gone within 15 minutes! I served them with some butter, blueberry jam or homemade pineapple jam (a fresh batch I just made that afternoon with Sarawak pineapples). This buttery cake is best served warm.

I couldn't resist making some heart-shaped Welsh cakes.. not so traditional but it put a smile on my kids faces

Warm Welsh Cakes with butter and blueberry jam.. yumm!

Soft and buttery delights

Baby C had hers with Nutella ;)

Happy smiles :)

Homemade Welsh Cakes
Recipe adapted from Delia Smith
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 10-12 minutes
Makes 20-25

Ingredients
225g self-raising flour
110g butter or margarine, cut into small cubes plus extra for greasing pan
75g sultanas or raisins
75 g caster sugar
1 small egg
½ teaspoon mixed spice

1. To cook these you need a heavy, flat, iron pan (sometimes called a griddle or girdle). If you do not have a griddle, then you can also use a good solid heavy frying pan.

2. Sift the flour, mixed spice and sugar together in a large mixing bowl, then rub in the butter or margarine as you would if you were making pastry. The mixture should be crumbly and resemble breadcrumbs.

3. Add the sultanas or raising and mix it in thoroughly. Then beat the egg lightly and add it to the mixture. Mix to a dough and, if the mixture seems a little too dry, add just a spot of milk. If it's too wet, add a little more flour.

4. Transfer the dough on to a lightly floured working surface and roll it out to about ¼ inch (5mm) thick. Then, using a 2½-inch (6.5 cm) plain cutter, cut the dough into rounds, re-rolling the trimmings until all the dough is used.

5. Lightly grease the griddle with some butter. Over a medium heat, cook the Welsh cakes for 3-4 minutes each side or until golden brown. If they look as if they're browning too quickly, turn the heat down a bit because it's important to cook them through. Serve them warm, with lots of butter and homemade jam or Welsh honey.

Great as an afternoon tea treat

Made with love xoxo

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I am submitting this to the "Cook Like Delia Smith" bloghop which I am co-hosting with Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids and Mich of Piece of Cake. To join, simply cook or bake any recipe from any Delia Smith websites or cookbooks and blog hop with us for the whole month of March 2013.

Your post must be a current post i.e. posted in March 2013 - please do not link older posts.Please mention Cook like a Star in your post and link back to Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids, Mich of Piece of Cake and Baby Sumo of Eat your heart out.

You can get the HTML code here: get the InLinkz code (Click on the link, copy and paste the HTML code into your blog post where you want the blog hop list to appear. Make sure you are in HTML mode when you paste in the code)

Happy cooking! Do check out the other bloggers recipe below:

NOTE: March 2013 marks the first anniversary of Cook like a Star event. Zoe, the main host for this event will be giving away a gift to a Cook like a Star participant who cooks or bakes the most popular recipe within the Delia Smith, Cook Like a Star blog hop event. To win, you have to be trend setter of Cook like a Star with Delia Smith theme. This means that if you are the first person that cook or bake the most popular Delia Smith recipe for this month, you will be the winner.