Learn more:

1. Top Cake Decoration Mistakes — That You Must Be Aware Of
2. Break Out and Make Your Cakes Three-Dimensional
3. How to Make Chocolate Cake
4. Decorating Clever Cakes
5. Chocolate-cherry Heart Cake Made With Rum

Learn more:

1. Must Have Accessories For Home Cake Decorators
2. How to Make Chocolate Cake
3. Decorating Clever Cakes
4. Chocolate-cherry Heart Cake Made With Rum
5. Break Out and Make Your Cakes Three-Dimensional

On Shrove Tuesday morning the church bell would ring to call parishioners to church to be shriven. Post-Reformation the bell also signified the beginning of festivities, the last chance for a jolly and a feast before the dry days of Lent. Reputedly, the first pancake race was run in Olney, Buckinghamshire in 1455, albeit unintentionally. One housewife cooking her pre-Lent batch of pancakes, heard the church bell ringing for the Shriving service, and realising she was late for the service ran out of the house arriving in church with the frying pan still in her hand. Olney still stages a pancake race each year, open to women over the age of 18, and happy to dress in the stereotypical garb of the housewife.

The Pancake Festival in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, is in its 10th year, organised by the The Rotary Club, raising money for the The Garden House Hospice and other local charities. Three pancakes races are run:

The men’s race.

The women’s race.

Fancy-dress, with the 118 guys – obligatory at all good charity sporting events.

In the town square I joined the queue for a pancake hot from the pan, serving to help me limber up for a pancake eating marathon later in the day. For pancake recipes both traditional and new, try this link. I can’t record my own efforts, as I am afraid they were consumed all too quickly, only to say they were very good!

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Learn more:

1. A Banana Pancake Recipe The Whole Family Will Love
2. Never Make This Recipe With Your KitchenAid Mixer
3. Persimmon Festival Brownies With Cream Cheese Frosting and Chocolate Orange Marble Poundcake Recipes

From a visit to the Brown’s Original Banbury Cakes website, I was delighted to learn that the current owner/baker, Phillip Brown, is related to Banbury Cake bakers dating back to the early 19th century. He himself is a direct descendent of E.W. Brown who ran ‘The Original Cake Shop’ from 1868 – her name appears over the door in this photo from 1902. Phillip Brown hand bakes his Banbury Cakes, and they are available for purchase online, and from a select number of shops (including A. Gold in London).

Since I wrote my earlier post about Banbury Cakes I bought Florence White’s book ‘Good Things in England’. She has a ‘modern’ recipe (dated 1929) for Banbury Cakes (alongside Gervase Markham’s recipe from 1615), that is apparently for the ’same type of cake as those sold by E.W. Brown’. An indiscreet plug for the cakes reads, ‘Anyone who wants to buy the best Banbury Cakes ever made can buy them from E.W. Brown, ‘The Original Cake Shop’, 12 Parson Street, Banbury, Oxfordshire. The recipe given is almost identical to the one that I baked for my Banbury Cakes.

My purchased Banbury Cakes were oval in shape but lacked the three slashes on top that my recipe had instructed I cut (as does the one in Florence White’s book). The tops were crusted with sugar, but differed from my efforts in that they were most likely brushed with egg white and then dusted with caster sugar. I used demerara, but this may have been an embellishment of my own devising.

The pastry was, unfortunately, a little travel weary. The Banbury Cakes had only a short excursion in Ellis’ changing bag, but this did compress the cakes a little. I felt that the cakes were probably best enjoyed as fresh as possible, and although they had a best-before date of almost four weeks hence, the pastry was a little dry. However, the filling of fruit, spices and sugar was positively fudgy, my only complaint was that there wasn’t more of it. All in all I felt my own efforts were pretty decent – certainly in terms of the outer (hmm, to be fair I bought my pastry), and if I were to remake the cakes I would make the fillings with a little more sugar so that they could melt on the tongue in the way Mr. Brown’s cakes did.

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Learn more:

1. Types of Gourmet Cakes
2. Break Out and Make Your Cakes Three-Dimensional
3. Shrewsbury Cakes from Shropshire
4. The Many Different Types of King Cakes
5. We Make Birthday Cakes Together!

According to Mason & Brown, Shrewsbury cakes (or biscuits) were first documented in the 1500s. The ingredients used at this time are unknown, but the cakes were renowned for their texture, being crisp and brittle. A couple of centuries later the Restoration playwright William Congreve used Shrewsbury cakes as a metaphor (“as short as a Shrewsbury cake”) within his play of 1700, ‘The Way of the World’. Another writer helped to popularise the cakes in the 19th century, . Richard Harris Barham writing as Thomas Ingoldsby penned a tale of ‘Bloudie Jacke of Shrewsberrie. The Shropshire Bluebeard – A Legend of the Proud Salopians’ (Salop is an abbreviation for the county of Shropshire). In this 1840 poem Shrewsbury cakes are attributed to Mr Pailin (“Oh, Pailin! Prince of cake-compounders! the mouth liquefies at thy very name”). If Mr. Pailin was a real person or not has not has as far I can tell been established, although a plaque on an old shop near to Shrewsbury Castle states that “This shop occupies the site of a building where Palin first made the unique Shrewsbury cakes to his original recipe in the year 1760” (alongside a quote from ‘Thomas Ingoldsby’ of 1840), and Mason and Brown write that a Miss Hill, daughter to a confectioner of the town, may have married a Mr. Palin(Pailin). Whether he was fact or fiction, Mr. Pailin’s name was taken by a manufacturer, Thomas Plimmer & Sons in the town, who registered as a trademark the name ‘Pailin’s Original Shrewsbury Cakes’. Production up until the Second World War was by Phillip’s Stores Limited. Sadly, due to the rationing of key ingredients, in particular butter, the manufacture of the biscuits then finished. If anyone knows of a commercial manufacturer in the town today, please let me know.

According to ‘The Taste of Britain” the earliest written recipe for the cakes is in Eliza Smith’s ‘The Compleat Housewife’ in 1728. Ms. Smith’s recipe is for a sweet biscuit with nutmeg and cinnamon. However, my internet rummaging came up with an earlier recipe, and Florence White’s ‘Good Things in England’ (1932) has a recipe that may also predate Eliza Smith’s book. The recipe in ‘Good Things…’ come from a Colonel Plomer of Shrewsbury, and he supplied it from a family receipt (recipe) book kept from 1630 to 1750. The Plomer family recipe flavours the biscuits with caraway seeds, nutmeg, sack (or sherry) and rosewater.

The second, older, recipe I found is in Hannah Woolley’s ‘The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet’, published in 1672. She flavoured her biscuits with cinnamon and rosewater only.

I am going to follow Colonel Plomer’s recipe, and not only because he has a fine name. I do like the flavour of both caraway seeds and rosewater, so I am happy to try them out in combination in one biscuit. The Colonel’s recipe works with one pound each of flour, butter and sugar. This must make up a rather large quantity of mixture, so I shall halve the recipe.

225g plain flour
225g caster sugar
225g unsalted butter
5g caraway seeds
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 egg, beaten
1 and 1/2 tbsp sherry (I only used the measure of rosewater as the mix was so wet)
1 and 1/2 tbsp rosewater

1. Preheat oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3. Prepare two large baking sheets.
2. Rub the butter into the flour.
3. Add the spices to the sugar and then tip the whole into the flour and butter mixture.
4. Add the beaten egg, and also the rosewater. I did this ahead of adding sherry, and found the mixture already to be too wet for rolling out successfully. I had to add more flour and omit the sherry altogether. I then chilled the mixture, covered, in the fridge. I left mine overnight, as I had to return to my little man, but 30 minutes would probably do it.
5. Roll out the mixture on a floured work surface. This still might take a bit of doing as the mixture is still a little sticky. Using circular fluted cutters to press out your biscuits and pop onto baking sheets.
6. Bake for approximately 20 minutes, but keep an eye on them. With all that butter and sugar disaster could quickly strike should one go off for a nice cup of tea.
7. Leave biscuits to cool for a few minutes before sliding them onto a wire cooling rack.

The biscuits were very sweet and buttery, as you might well expect considering the proportions of ingredients. The rosewater added to this sweetness, but for me the nutmeg was completely lost. Caraway seeds have a distinctive flavour and they did manage to stand up to the rest of the biscuit, and retain a voice of their own. The biscuits had a rather nice denseness and the promised brittleness manifested itself in a good clean ‘snap’. That all said, I would next time round look at reducing the amount of butter (made the mixture difficult to work) and the sugar (I like my own teeth), perhaps adapting a more standard shortbread recipe as these biscuits are a form of shortbread.

I’ve had a request for an up-to-date picture of Ellis. Just the one, but I only need to be asked once. Thank-you for indulging me my proud mumness! Here he is – 9 1/2 weeks young.

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Learn more:

1. Types of Gourmet Cakes
2. Banbury Cakes Revisited
3. Break Out and Make Your Cakes Three-Dimensional
4. The Many Different Types of King Cakes
5. We Make Birthday Cakes Together!

Hertfordshire is one of southern England’s apple growing counties. The first commerical plantings of Cox’s Orange Pippins were established there in the 1860s. The crisp, sweet and sharp, russetted dessert apple became one of the most popular varieties and is widely available today. I had bought a quantity of Cox’s and Bramley apples with which to make some mincemeat, and having spent a morning in the kitchen inhaling the fug of warm spices, cider and the rich sweetness of cooked apples, I felt ready to bake a little something for immediate consumption (don’t you think that ‘fug’ is the perfect word for cider related activities?).

My recipe is from the book ‘Farmhouse Fare’ by Countrywise Books. First published in 1973, it is a collection of country recipes gathered by the readers of ‘Farmers Weekly’ magazine. The recipes had been collected by the magazine since its launch in 1934; generally from the wives and daughters of farmers – those stalwart ladies at the heart of rural communities, who make good use of locally available ingredients, and produce from their own fields and livestock. My particular recipe was sent in by a Miss Mary MacDonald of Inverness-shire (Scotland), but it struck me as being the perfect recipe to capture something of the combination of apples, sweetness and spice that I had scented the house with whilst simmering my apple mincemeat.

225g cooking apples (or strong flavoured dessert apples, such as Cox’s Orange Pippins)
75g Demerara sugar
112g golden syrup
75g butter
175g self-raising flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 egg

For the icing:
175g icing sugar
2-3 dessertspoons of warm water
1 level teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas mark 4.
2. Grease and line an square or oblong cake tin (I used a loaf tin).
3. Peel and slice the apples, and put into a pan with 1 dessertspoon of sugar, and enough water to stop them from burning.
4. Stew gently until tender. Mash up and leave to cool.
5. Put the golden syrup, butter and the remainder of the sugar, into a pan and warm over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Leave to cool.
6. Sift the flour and the spices into a large basin.
7. Whisk the egg in a smaller bowl, add the cooled syrup mixture and continue to whisk until well mixed.
8. Add to the flour, along with the apple pulp. Stir well and then turn into prepared tin.
9. Bake for about half an hour.
10. Allow to cool a little before turning out of the tin. When fully cooled, prepare icing.
11. Sieve icing sugar and cinnamon into a bowl.
12. Mix with enough water to form a thick coating consistency.
13. Spread over the top of the cake and leave to set.

The gingerbread was a pale sponge, rippled with the flesh of the cooked apples. Lovely and moist. I was concerned that the quantity of cinnamon in the icing might be too tongue numbing, but it was perfect. Icing sugar is so saccharine, that the cinnamon had to fight hard to match the sweetness. The spiced icing complemented the cake extremely well, and added an extra flavour to the whole. This could be a nice alternative to the heavy fruit cakes served at Christmas time, perhaps with the addition of a handful of raisins. Plastic Santa is optional.

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Learn more:

1. Old Fashion Apple Dessert Recipes: Mom’S Apple Dumplings And Apple Cheddar Cheese Dessert
2. How to Make Simple Apple Crisp
3. Apple Crisp Recipes to Surprise Your Visitors
4. Apple Crisp For Diabetics (Tasty For Anyone!)
5. Little about Apple

I was given a lovely send-off by my work friends, some of whom I have only had the pleasure of working with for a short time, but we had all bonded over coffee/tea and cake of a morning. Coffee and cake for one is never as fun (although it does mean more cake for me), so this posting I would like to write as a thank-you to the team and as a virtual coffee/tea-break for them to share in.

One of the presents I was given was a cup and saucer set, designed by someone who obviously also enjoys the finer, simple pleasures of life. The saucer has space on it for a slice of cake to accompany whatever warm beverage you are most partial to. What a work of genius.

I was also given a rather fine and cleverly designed mixing bowl. This is ergonomically shaped so that it sits both into the crook of the arm, and securely on the worktop by means of an angled base. Gary Rhodes has put his name to the range, and it is nice to think of Gary waking in the middle of the night with the idea fresh in his head, but possibly someone else did the night-time inspiration on his behalf. We shall never know…

So taking the lead from these two gifts, and also the long-standing tradition of mid-morning and mid-afternoon social refuelling, I have baked a suitable cake to accompany a pot of tea; or if you need a shot of something stronger pre-lunch, then a pot of coffee.

Across Britain home-bakers have created a wide gamut of cakes and breads well suited to accompany a nice cup of tea. I say tea, because historically we are a nation of tea drinkers. Coffee had its heyday here in the late 17th century, mainly amongst the wealthy and intellectual; but once tax on tea was reduced the coffee pot was drained and rarely refilled. Coffee remained a European preference and not an English taste, until we saw the introduction here of Italian-style coffee bars and then the emergence of the American coffee chain that I need not name; but this has been a slow percolation over the last fifty years or so. Tea is the drink of the people, a social activity as much as a refreshment. What would this country be without tea and cake; tea rooms; tea breaks; tea stops; flasks of tea; tea shops; tea and biscuits; tea dances; tea and sympathy; High Tea and Afternoon Tea? One can drink it by oneself, but a pot of tea is so much nicer placed in the middle of a table surrounded by other folk.

Tea breads come in as many different forms as there are ways of taking tea. Sweetened breads are the pre-raising agent equivalent of cakes, and the older forms of tea bread are yeast-raised doughs – think of such treats as Hot Cross buns, Chelsea buns and Saffron cake. With the introduction of baking powders in the mid-19th century, tea breads and cakes could take a different form, and could become as light as a Victoria sponge cake, or dense and delicious like Madeira cake. From these examples you will see that there are few cakes not suited to accompany a nice cuppa.

Jane Grigson gives a recipe for Fruit Tea Loaf in English Food. Ms. Grigson states that such cakes were particularly popular in Yorkshire and the North of England, where they were served at High Tea and at post-funeral get-togethers (wakes). High Tea is a Northern/Scottish meal, served early Sunday evening prior to church. It is a proper family sit-down, with copious amounts of tea and home-baked goodies. Jane also mentions that tea loaves are all the better for a few days keeping before eating – something I usually struggle with in my greed, but that I did manage to achieve this time (a big pat on the back to me).

My recipe is another take on the tea bread idea, for it makes use of tea as an ingredient – a key element in fact – the tea both rehydrates the dried fruits in the cake, and adds a depth of flavour. The recipe comes from the website of the Honey Association. I thought I would get a plug in for them ahead of National Honey Week, which runs from the 12th to the 18th of February. The recipe uses honey instead of refined sugar. As honey has a more distinct flavour than sugar, I was interested to see if I could still taste it in the finished cake – or would the tea flavour dominate?

I used Twinings Afternoon Tea in my cake. This may cause a shudder amongst tea-drinkers of a sensitive disposition, but I do have to confess that I used tea bags. We are coffee drinkers at home, so I swiped a few bags from the cupboard at work (tea tastes are far classier there). Twinings Afternoon Tea is a blend of Kenyan, Assam and Ceylon teas. It is described as having a character being ‘bright and refreshing’. Well, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.

The honey also has a link with my recently departed from company. An ex-fellow worker’s father has his own bees, and the honey I used in the cake is from him. The honey was produced by busy bees in Frome, Somerset. Which by coincidence is also the county where the butter I used for slice spreading was produced.

So I soaked my fruit, made my cake and then left it to its own devices for a few days, tightly swaddled in kitchen foil. The grand unwrapping came when I had the pleasure of having my mum here for the day, and we were able to sit down and enjoy tea and cake together. The cake was lovely and moist, and after some ladylike sniffing, we judged that there seemed to be a hint of honey scent to the cake. I couldn’t really determine a flavour of honey, nor of tea, but it was pleasant enough taste-wise, although I think it could have benefited from having a little more definite flavour.

My mum brought with her a box of homemade flapjacks, so I can now look forward to several morning-coffee ‘breaks’ with a flapjack at the side of my cup. It is a tough job not working.

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Learn more:

1. Organic Honey – The Healthy Sweetener You Deserve
2. Want Something Sweetly With No Messy? Go For Honey
3. A Recipe for Rye Bread

In the bad old days before telly, any excuse for a bit of time off work, or for a pint or two of strong beer, was an opportunity to be seized (so things haven’t changed all that much really). Unfortunately, this meant that less cheerful get-togethers, for reasons such as a public hanging or burning, were also a chance for a holiday, a slice of cake and a jug of ale. ‘Holywake’ is a 17th century word (in use in the Cotswolds) for ‘bonfire’; more specifically meaning a bonfire lit to extinguish heretics. Holywake Bake was, according to June Lewis in ‘The Cotswold Cook Book’, a cake cooked and sold at such unholy gatherings. To my mind, the inclusion of oatmeal in this recipe makes it a Northern treat, as oats grow best in the Borders counties and Scotland. Oatmeal is a key ingredient in parkin (a type of gingerbread cake), which itself has an association with November the 5th. I decided to have a go at baking Holywake Bake Cake because I thought it interesting to find a bonfire story alternative to the well-known tale commemorated with thanksgiving explosions at this time of year. Sorry not to come up with something a little more cheery!

175g self-raising flour
50g fine oatmeal
1 1/2 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda
1 level tablespoon ground ginger
110g raisins (if liked)
2 tablespoons of golden syrup
2 tablespoons of black treacle
75g unsalted butter
75g brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
(also on June’s ingredients list was 1/4 pint of milk, but this was omitted from the method – add a little milk to the mixture if you think it looks dry)

1. Preheat oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3. Grease and line a 10″ by 7″ tin.
2. In a large bowl stir together the flour, oatmeal, ginger, raisins (I excluded these) and bicarbonate of soda.
3. Put the syrup, treacle, butter and sugar into a small saucepan and melt over a low heat. Stir well to blend.
4. As soon as the above mixture has melted, pour into the dry ingredients and mix.
5. Add the egg and beat well. Add some milk now if you think it necessary – I didn’t because I thought the mix looked OK, but the resulting cake could perhaps have benefited from it.
6. Pour into prepared tin and pop in the oven. Cake should take about an hour to bake.
7. Allow to cool in the tin; then turn out and cut into (12ish) squares.

I followed June’s suggestion and made this a few days ahead of November the 5th; the cake would grow moist and sticky if it were to be left in a tin for a short time. This is usually sound advice with gingerbreads, but this time round I didn’t find that the cake improved any. In fact I was a little disappointed by it. Maybe that errant 1/4 pint of milk would have made all the difference, although I have found plenty of other gingerbread recipes that don’t call for any extra moisture. Best consumed with a large mug of something wet and warming.

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Learn more:

1. Top Cake Decoration Mistakes — That You Must Be Aware Of
2. Fudge Nut Brownie Cake With Chocolate Glaze
3. Peanut Butter Creme Fudge Torte Cake for a Sweet Treat
4. Super Easy Birthday Cake Recipes. Make Your Own, Don’t Use a Box!
5. Parkin (or Perkin or Tharf cake)