Welsh Cheese Cakes

For no real reason, it’s ages since I did any baking – I used to bake very regularly, but thinking about it that was when the children were living at home, and also when we had more people coming round to visit. That makes us sound as if the kids have fled and we have no friends – which isn’t really true, but things have changed. One child is temporarily living at home, the other I see regularly and we go off on jaunts – and guess what? We usually drop into a café or tearoom for refreshment which usually includes… cake! As for friends, we meet away from home – in town, at a place of interest, in a bar or pub, or at an interest group – reading, writing, art, music,. We rarely have visitors at home. I guess it’s the way it is for many people these days.

I may not do much baking, but I still love reading recipe books, and I’, just now looking at one of my old ones, first published in 1950, the Whitworth’s ‘Spice of Life’, cost three shillings! Mine is the 4th edition, and in quite good condition, considering it has obviously been well-used. I was looking through it and thinking of my mum using the Be-Ro flour cookery book, as her mum had. A recipe caught my eye and the ingredients looked similar to those Mum used to make delicious treats for us. I can’t now remember what she called them, but it wasn’t the same as in the little book I’m looking at now:

Welsh Cheese Cakes

• 6 oz rich, short crust pastry or rough puff pastry (page 8)
• jelly or jam
• 4 dessertspoons caster sugar
• 4 tablespoons Whitworth’s ground rice or Whitworth’s fine semolina
• 2 tablespoons melted butter
• 1 good-sized egg

1. roll out pastry and line 9-12 small patty tines with it.
2. into each, place a tiny teaspoon of jelly or jam
3. mix together the sugar, ground rice or fine semolina and melted butter
4. lastly, stir in the well-beaten egg
5. place on the jam in small spoonfuls and bake for 15-20 minutes in a fairly hot oven (gas mark 6 or 425 degrees Fahr.)

I always find it interesting how the style of writing out recipes has changed, the tone now is much more brisk and formulaic for the most part. I’ll share the rough puff and short crust pastry recipes another time, the fat in rough puff is margarine, or butter or lard – or a mixture of any two, the short crust is lard, margarine or dripping. I don’t suppose anyone apart from very traditional cooks would use dripping in pastry, especially for a sweet tart, I’m not sure even where you might get any these days!

My featured image is of a Welsh view