Owling About

This morning is bright and crisp. The washing is on the line. Lorries have been trundling in and out of the farm yard. They are here to collect some cattle.

Have any of you ever heard of Lardy cake? When I left home and moved away from the West Country I was astonished to find the rest of the UK didn’t make this wondrous stuff. We used to get a slice as children on a saturday morning, all warm from the bakery round the corner. But not too often, because it’s as bad for you as it sounds! This is the sort of cake you eat instead of lunch. My mum and dad can’t get hold of it in Devon anymore so I thought it was a delicious memory confined to the past.

Then our friends bought us Karen Saunders’ book Traditional Breads for your Breadmaker. One of the first recipes is Lardy cake! Although we do have a breadmaker the great thing about this book is that you can easily adapt the recipe to not need one. For Lardy cake you make up a bread dough but also add 2 tablespoons of lard and 1 tbsp of granulated sugar. Leave it to prove somewhere warm. When it’s ready knead the dough and roll it out to about half a centimetre thick. In your mind’s eye divide the rolled out dough into thirds. Scatter diced butter, lard, granulated sugar, and dried fruit over two thirds. Fold in the top third and the bottom third, turn it over and roll it out again. You could keep going as long as you wanted with this but I did it another two times, then put it in the oven. My mistake was to put it in a cake tin with a removable bottom. This meant some of the lard and butter leaked out so it wasn’t quite as gooey as it should have been. Next time I’ll probably divide it between two loaf tins.

The final conclusion? A big thumbs up from everyone. My childhood memory hadn’t failed me when it came to the wonders of the Lardy cake!