Chocolate and Cherry Baked Welsh Cakes

If you haven't come across welsh cakes before then you are in for a treat - these buttery tea time cakes are some where between a scotch pancake and a shortbread - traditionally stuffed with dried fruit they are 'fried' on a hot griddle which has been lightly wiped over with butter - they are meant to be slighty burnt - some say very burnt - which gives a nutty taste to the finished cake - and are served warm sprinkled with caster sugar or a spread of melting butter . . . perfect on a soft welsh day of drizzeling rain.  The traditional welsh cake as I said usually is either blind (with out dried fruit) or with a handful of dried currants/raisins etc.  However I am not one for tradition - dont get me wrong ones of these little beauties with a cup of tea does take a lot of beating but you can always improve on perfection! So I have swapped out the traditional currents for a bit more decadent chocolate and glace cherries.  The first time I made them I did the traditional fry version but the chocolate and cherry made it burn faster so the outside was black and the inside was almost raw - a gooey mess! OK plan B a hot oven - 175C - a lined baking tray and around 10 minutes cooking.




Ingredients

8oz Self Raising Flour
4oz butter (preferably Welsh)
3oz caster sugar
1 egg (whisked)

Filling of your choice - chopped nuts / dried fruit / chocolate pieces/ finely chopped glace cherries - rule of thumb it should be a good handful but the amount is entirely up to you



Preheat oven to 175C

This is best made with your hands - you are going to get sticky so take off rings, scrub nails and then run your hands under the cold tap (will help you to not melt the butter as you mix)

Rub the butter into the flour to make breadcrumbs and then add in the sugar and the filling - mix it well with your hands - if you are using a sticky filling like glace cherries this with help break up the clumps and get a more even distribution,

Make a well in the centre of the mix and pour in the egg and then mix to bring together as a dough - if it seems a little dry add a dash of milk - you are after a soft dough which holds together well for rolling out.

Turn out your dough onto a floured surface and roll out to approx 5mm thick - I use a 68mm cutter to make my cakes with is about jaffercake size and will make 19/20 welsh cakes.

Place your cakes on baking trays lined with greaseproof paper (they will spread a little so leave space between them) and pop in a preheated oven - they take between 7 and 12 minutes to cook - check them after 7 - you are looking for an even golden brown colour to the top.

Take them out of the oven and sprinkle with caster sugar - make sure you do this while they are still on the baking sheet or you will end up covering your side in sugar!!

Carefully lift each cake onto a cooling rack gently tapping the excess sugar off over the baking tray as you go.

These are lovely eaten warm although make sure you leave them at least 5 minutes to let any fruit inside cool to none burning levels! or left to go cold they are delicious any time.

Baked welsh cakes are not as soft as the fried ones and do not have the slightly nutty taste gained from frying them in the butter but they do still have the distinct buttery moreish taste of this favourite teatime treat and will last for around 1 week in an airtight tin - if they make it in there!


If you would like to try a more traditional version then make the mix exactly as above (I would recommend the dried fruit) and then heat a griddle or heavy bottomed frying pan - rub a little butter over the surface and then fry the cakes in small batches for 3 minutes on each side - dont panic if they burn on the outside - sprinkle with sugar and serve

Cooking with Aspergers

When I first started teaching K to cook I thought that it was going to be an easy task - take one cook book and a group of ingrediants and stand back and direct. . . with in 5 minutes it became apparent that this was not going to be the case.

Although recipes are pretty straight forward - well so I thought - they ha two big problems - firstly they weren't basic enough - it is no good saying add one teaspoon of . . . we needed to start with take a teaspoon out of the drawer - and secondly they made assumptions - say dice an onion to an average person and they will go ahead and roughly dice away, say it to K and his first question is whats an onion (yes seriously) and his second question is what size pieces exactly - this doesn't even include the what should I cut it with and you never said peel it!

So I was left with two choices - leave him to the fate of pre-packaged ready meals or learn to deconstruct recipes and put them back together in a way he could understand, follow and make tasty nutritious meals he would be proud of.

I chose the latter and now a couple of years in K is fast becoming a fairly proficient cook and I have learnt to look at cooking in a new way - I have also learnt that just because I have shown K to make one thing i.e lasagne  that he wont be able to make similar items like spagetti bolognase - every recipe I have to go back to basics and start from scratch - when you are teaching someone with aspergers there are no short cuts!

K wasn't diagnosed until he was well in to adulthood and so there is the added challenge of teaching him to cook but cook proper grown up food as he isn't interested in making smiley faces out of sausages and mash so we are always on the look out for new recipes for K - if you have any to share please leave me a comment

I will be adding some of his favourite recipes on the blog as we go along as well as some of the tried and tasted family recipes and those new family favourites I discover along the way!