Orchard Training Cookery Club - St David's Day

This week we are celebrating St David's Day at the cookery club and I have drawn upon my Welsh nanny's cookery book for sometime honoured Welsh recipes.

We started with Welsh Cakes or Griddle Cakes. These are cooked on a griddle, which is like a flat piece of metal held above the open fire, left to get hot, greased and the cakes cooked on it, with them easily turned so they cook on both sides. I no longer have a griddle, mainly because I don't have an open fire on which to cook from, but pancake pans are ideal for the modern world of Welsh Cakes.

Next we tried our hand at Bara Birth, this is a rich fruit loaf made with tea and is a favourite Welsh tea-time treat sliced and spread with butter. Now I know the original recipe that my Nanny had contained sultanas, raisins and currents. However, currents are universally disliked in my family (it's in the genes) and so the recipe I learnt 40 years ago left them out. Over time different family members have adapted the recipe to include the dried fruits they preferred. In a blind tasting, you could workout whose is whose just by the combination of dried fruit. Mine is very easy to identify, simply because I don't like the flavour of tea. I make mine with 3 bags of hibiscus fruit infusion, dried cherries, cranberries and some sultanas and instead of the traditional mixed spices, I use the German gingerbread pepper! I know, it is now so far away from the original traditional recipes, especially as I use also wholemeal flour too! However, we bake this in honour of our Welsh Nanny and I know she wouldn't have minded. She would have called it "Fancy, with all aires and graces."

Finally, our celebration of St David's Day could not be without daffodils, could it? We had a go at making daffodils with fondant. I think your host of daffodils on a green hill look fabulous!

Welsh afternoon tea anybody?