Chorley Cakes

It's the kind of afternoon when the light goes early and the kettle is on more often than off. The garden has nothing left to give but a few apples and the last of the herbs gone leggy. This is when Chorley cakes make sense. Not in July when there's fruit on every branch, but now, when the cooking turns inward and the cupboard does most of the work.

If you've only had Eccles cakes, the famous flaky ones with their burst of dark sugar and peel, a Chorley cake might seem like a quiet disappointment at first glance. It isn't. It's a different thing altogether. The pastry is shortcrust, soft and biscuity, not rich and shattering. The filling is plainer: currants, butter, a whisper of spice, no peel, no brandy, no fanfare. The cakes are pressed flat so the currants show through the pastry like dark coins under thin ice. They're less sweet, less showy, and altogether more useful.

The trick is what you do with them after they come out of the oven. Split them while they're still warm, butter the cut sides with cold salted butter, and lay a thick wedge of Lancashire cheese on top. The salt of the cheese, the cool butter, the warm currants, the crumble of the pastry. It shouldn't work and it does. I wrote it down in the notebook the first time I had one done properly: "Chorley. Cheese. November. Yes." That's still all I need to remember.

We're only making dinner, or in this case the thing you eat between dinners, the small ceremony of tea on a grey afternoon. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract. If your currants are very plump, use a few less. If you like the spice stronger, add more. Your kitchen, your rules.