March 1st is St David’s Day. As Patron Saint of Wales that means I’m compelled to make Welsh Cakes for my work colleagues.

My mum used to make these for us all the time when we were young, and they were always a favourite. She always had trouble getting the sugar to stick to them once they were cooked, except for one time when it stuck perfectly. She was so happy about it… until we realised she’d accidentally rolled them in salt!

Anyway… I’m following the BBC Good Food recipe, because I can’t find my mum’s old recipe for them :(

225g plain flour

85g caster sugar

1/2 tsp mixed spice

1/2 tsp baking powder

50g unsalted butter

50g lard

50g currants

1 large egg (US jumbo)

Oil spray for frying

Caster sugar for coating

Cut the fats into the dry ingredients with the food processor. Mix in currants by hand, then whisk the egg and mix that in to form the dough. Turns out I only had medium eggs (US large) so I used a little milk to bring the dough together. Roll out the dough to about 1cm thick, and cut out circles using an 8cm cookie cutter.

Well I’ve spotted a huge flaw in this recipe. Even though my dough was rolled to only about 7-8mm, I only got 12 cakes out of it. The recipe claims you get 16… and to be honest that’s not enough in my book! So I’ll be doing a second batch :)

Fry each cake in non-stick frying pan, on a low heat, using a few sprays of oil on each side. Once nicely browned remove from the pan, coat both sides in sugar, and then cool on a cooling rack.

They are of course lovely. They’re Welsh cakes, what do you expect!

I just hope they go down well with the Welsh guy as work!