Guests who have stayed at our shepherd's hut will have received my homemade Welsh cakes as a welcome gift. This is how I make them, following the simplest recipe by Mary Berry.
In a bowl, I mix 225g of self-raising flour with 100g of margarine or butter (I use butter) until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Then I add 75g of caster sugar, 1/2 a teaspoon of mixed spice and 75g of currants. In a little measuring jug, I beat one egg with 1 or 2 tablespoons of milk and I then pour this into the mixing bowl and mix to a firm dough. This can also be done successfully (and effortlessly!) in a stand mixer.
I roll this pastry out to about 5 mm in thickness and cut into rounds. I usually make my Welsh cakes small, almost bitesize as that is how I prefer them!
I use a heavy-based, non-stick pancake pan as I don't have a griddle, which is what is traditionally used to cook Welsh cakes. I heat the pan first then I turn the heat down to cook the cakes for about 3 minutes on each side. You can easily tell when they are cooked: if they sound hollow when tapped, they are ready.
I let them cool on a wire rack before sprinkling caster sugar on each side. If I freeze them, I don't sugar them till I bring them out.
In Welsh, they are cacen gri (meaning griddle cakes) or pica ar y maen (bake stone cakes) depending on which area of Wales. In Montgomeryshire, we say cacen gri.
Enjoy!