Welsh Cakes

It's the kind of afternoon that wants something on the pan, not in the oven. The light has gone thin and grey outside, the kettle is on for the second time, and you want something sweet that doesn't involve waiting an hour. This is what Welsh cakes are for.

They're not scones and they're not biscuits. They sit somewhere of their own, halfway between, cooked on a hot iron rather than baked in the heat of the oven. Pice ar y maen, cakes on the stone. The bakestone was once a flat slab of iron set over the fire, and a griddle or a heavy frying pan does the same job now. The cakes go on dry, more or less, and come off smelling of warm butter and currants and the sugar that's just starting to caramelise on the underside. There are few better smells in a kitchen.

The dough is barely a dough. Flour, butter, sugar, a handful of currants, a teaspoon of mixed spice, an egg to bring it all together. You rub the butter in like you would for pastry, gather it into something rollable, cut it into rounds, and cook them gently until they're golden on both sides. The whole thing takes half an hour and tastes of someone's grandmother's kitchen, even if it isn't yours.

I wrote it down in the notebook the first time I made them properly: "Welsh cakes. Saturday. Rain. Tea. Right food, right evening." That's still the whole recipe, really. The rest is just measurements.