British Cakes and tarts you can try: Banbury Cakes - home made, to use up leftover pastry

With some leftover puff pastry we looked for what we could make. In the good old days everybody made all kinds of pastry at home. Now both homes and restaurants use packet mixes. You can buy pancake mix, frozen made up puff pastry ready to roll out and cook, as well as tart bases.

Trips to restaurants, up north, and to supermarkets, show all kinds of regional cakes, pies and biscuits. What can you make quickly with pastry or leftover pastry, or pastry bought made up, ready-made from the supermarket?

We made Banbury Cakes. Here is the result:

What's the difference between a Banbury cake and an Eccles cake?
The Banbury cake is oval.
The Eccles cake is round.

How do you remember which is which? I think of the round cake looking like a circle, like the letter c appearing twice in the middle of Eccles. Or think of the letter c in twice in circle and twice in Eccles.(Banbury is the other one. Oval. Banbury and oval both contain the letter a.)

How do you make it? Roll out your pastry, put in the filling. Pull the outsides of the pastry into the middle above the filling and pinch it all together in the middle like a small bag. Then turn over and flatten it and roll it out with a rolling pin. As you roll it out, you stretch it into an oval pattern.

What is the filling? Traditionally it is dark and looks like mincemeat (which you can buy ready made in a glass jar from a supermarket in the UK). The difference is that mincemeat contains suet. The Banbury cake has currants (or raisins or sultanas), honey (or sugar), candied orange peel - (or fresh lemon peel). You add nutmeg or cinnamon.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1112640/banbury-cakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banbury_cake
See Wikipedia for all kinds of English and British cakes.


Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Stop at Waitrose for weekly magazine and recipe cards

When in London, England, stop at Waitrose to buy a Sunday paper and pick up recipe cards and Waitrose weekend. The recipes in the magazine are a mixture of simple recipes which require something simple like buying salmon and adding a ready made sauce, meals in minutes to pop in a microwave, or 'proper' recipes for keen cooks requiring several ingredients and an entertainment for the morning afternoon or evening.

The mincemeat Eccles cakes with rum and mandarin butter set our keen cook getting busy whilst I went researching Eccles cakes and others (see previous post).

Rum
Brown rum is aged in cask and coloured with caramel. (The caramel is made from sugar, but cooked a bit more than syrup, until it oxidises).


Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, researcher, author, speaker.

BUY OR DIY Xmas party food and cakes from Waitrose, with snowman carrot nose

The big surprise was that the snowman's nose is made with a real carrot, a Chantenay carrot, small and conical. The carrot nose inspired me to think of making a carrot cake with a snowman face on top with a carrot nose. (I sometimes have carrot cake from the cafe in Waitrose.)

In your nearest branch of Waitrose supermarket, pick up a copy of the Entertaining Christmas Food made to order. At the back it shows you how to decorate a plain undecorated top iced cake. (The cake can be fruit cake to serve 3-35 costing £26, or chocolate, or sponge, to serve 20-30, at £16.)
If your order comes to £60 you get free delivery.

Their other brochure which is full of recipes shows you how to make mince tarts. You can make them any size you like, using ready-made shortcrust pastry and a jar of mincemeat, or make everything yourself. 

Waitrose Online 0800 022 4051.