British Cakes and Biscuits

Plate of shortbread. By User:Dave souza - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1513232

The picture above shows a plate of shortbread, Scotland's traditional biscuit. Shortbread is made from butter, flour, and sugar, to produce a crumbly and rich biscuit. In the past, shortbread would have contained spices, as well. It is very easy to make this at home, using proportions of two, four, six, for the sugar, butter, and flower, respectively, and forming it into fingers, or rounds, or one big round which is divided into triangles. Boxes of shortbread are also exported across the world. Shortbread plays a role at Christmas and at Hogmanay, when people like to eat it themselves, or give it as presents. Hogmany is the Scottish word for New Year's Eve.

An eccles cake, pictured below, comes from the town of Eccles, in Lancashire, England.

Chorley cake, left, and Eccles cake, right. By Dr Greg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19617702

This baked good is not exactly what we think of as a cake today, as the outside crust is made from a buttery, flaky pastry. The filling consists of dried fruit, usually currants, with sugar and spices. You can buy these reasonably easily too, although I think that they taste much better if you bake them yourself.

In the south of England, in several counties such as Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, Dorest, Wiltshire, and Gloucestershire, you sometimes find a delicious and extremely rich cake, called lardy cake, below.

Lardy cake. By Smuconlaw - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41649258

This is a cake with a difference, because it is made with a yeasted dough, as you make bread. This contains dried fruit like raisins, currants, and sultanas, along with flour, sugar, spices, and most importantly lard, the name for pork fat. The lard makes the cake really oily and rich. It is very hard to resist this cake. I have bought it myself, at the Oxford Covered Market, and at the Oxford Gloucester Green market.

Finally, we also find the Bath bun, from Somerset or Cornwall in the the south west of England. These buns are easy to buy in the town of Bath, Somerset. They are also quite easy to make at home. The novelist, Jane Austen, (1775-1817), mentions eating these herself.

Bath bun. By Richard Allaway from France - Culture... a bath bun and a pot of tea, Bath, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55024859 I have cropped this image.

Again, these buns are made from a dough that rises with yeast, as you would make bread. You also add milk to the dough to make it richer, and you can add dried fruit or sugar. The sugar crystals on top of the bun give it a distinctive appearance and a crunchy texture.

Probably, you need a cup of tea, or indeed, of coffee, to wash down these treats!

Vocabulary:

yeast is the microscopic fungus which is used to make bread, and also wine and beer

dough is the mixture flour and liquid, which is think enough to handle, that you use for baking

Hogmanay is the Scottish word for New Year's Eve.

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