Hairy Bikers Welsh cakes start with 100g of dried cherries soaked in hot whisky, then go into a buttery dough and onto the griddle. And this Chicken & Egg recipe gives you 20, each about 140 calories by my estimate, in roughly 1 hour 45 minutes.
Whisky takes Welsh cakes to “another level of deliciousness”, Si and Dave reckon, and they baked these at a showground near Aberystwyth. So the usual sultanas make way for dried cherries, snipped to currant size if they’re big, with a bit of orange zest in the dough.
The one thing to watch is the heat, because if the griddle gets too hot the outsides burn before the middles cook. Then tip each batch into the sugar while it’s hot, since that’s when the sugar sticks best, in my experience.
Hairy Bikers Welsh Cakes Recipe
Description
The cherries sit in warm whisky for an hour, then go into a simple rubbed-in dough with orange zest. Once rolled and cut, the 6cm rounds cook in batches on a greased griddle before being turned in sugar.
Ingredients
For the Welsh cakes
To cook and finish
Instructions
- Soak the cherries: If your dried cherries are on the big side, snip them with scissors to about the size of currants. Then tip them into a saucepan with the whisky and heat until it just starts to boil. Take the pan off the heat and leave them to soak for an hour.
- Make the dough: Put the flour and sugar in a bowl with a pinch of salt, then rub in the butter until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the orange zest and the cherries, with any whisky they haven’t soaked up. Then cut the beaten egg in with a knife, and once it starts to clump together, bring it into a ball with your hands.
- Roll and cut: Turn the dough out onto a floured worktop and roll it to between ½cm and 1cm thick. Then cut out 6cm rounds, re-rolling the scraps, until you’ve got about 20.
- Cook on the griddle: Heat a griddle or a heavy frying pan and brush it with a little lard or butter. Cook the cakes in batches over a medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes a side, until they’re firm and a deep golden brown. But don’t let the heat creep up, or they’ll burn before the middles are cooked.
- Coat in sugar: Sprinkle the extra caster sugar on a plate, then tip the hot cakes onto it and flip them so they’re well covered. Then eat them while they’re still warm, since that’s when they’re at their best.
FAQs
Can I make Welsh cakes without whisky?
Yes, and Mums Still Know Best has the plain kind, from Mary Hamilton, who learned to cook from her nan. And it’s just 225g of self-raising flour, 110g of salted butter, 85g of caster sugar, an egg and a handful of sultanas.
You roll it to 5mm, cut it with a 7.5 to 10cm cutter and give it 2 to 3 minutes a side. But they say it makes 6 to 8, though by my maths you’ll get somewhere between 12 and 20. And if you were after candied peel Welsh cakes, I haven’t found a version with peel in any of their books.
How are their Welsh griddle cakes different?
The griddle cakes in Mums Know Best are spiced, made with plain flour, baking powder, butter, lard, allspice, nutmeg, lemon zest and currants. And with milk in, it’s a soft dough, so you flatten golf-ball pieces with wet hands instead of rolling.
They take longer too, about 5 minutes a side on a low heat, and you eat them with butter and jam or Caerphilly. And if you like things cooked flat in a pan, their tattie scones are the savoury side of the same idea.
Is there a Hairy Bikers Welsh cake cheesecake or tiramisu?
There’s a cheesecake in Mums Still Know Best, from Derith Rhisiart, who puts cranberries and white chocolate in her Welsh cakes. Then 4 or 5 of them get chopped into a filling of 600g of cream cheese, while the rest line the biscuit base.
But they write 60mm for rolling that dough, which I think is a misprint for 6mm, since they get about 50 from a 5cm cutter. And their Welsh cake tiramisu is on BBC Food rather than in any of the books, so I’ve left that one for another day.
Is this the same as the BBC recipe?
It looks like it, because their “cherry and whiskey Welsh cakes” on BBC Food also make 20. But remember BBC Good Food is a different site from BBC Food, in case that’s where you went looking.
And while you’ve got your Welsh hat on, their Welsh rarebit stirs the cheese into a beer sauce with an egg yolk and English mustard.
How long do Welsh cakes keep?
Si and Dave say they’re best eaten hot, but they don’t give a keeping time. So I keep leftovers in an airtight tin for 2 to 3 days and warm them in a dry pan, which is my own habit.
If you’d rather bake than stand at the hob, their rock cakes go in the oven instead. Or for another Welsh teatime treat, their bara brith has its fruit soaked overnight in tea.
