Welsh Laverbread Cakes

This New Year, Mr P and I spent a lovely few days with our friends Beth and Pete on Anglesey. the trip was memorable for many reasons, not least the following conversation:

Pete: Ooh, I'm going to cook this egg in the log burner.

Me: I'm pretty sure it'll explode.

Pete: Don't be daft, it'll be amazing.

Me: Hmm.

A couple of minutes later...

Me: I really think you should get it out before it explodes.

Pete: It's going to be perfectly cooked, and then you'll be laughing on the other side of your [BANG].

Sometime life grants us comic timing that would just look implausible in a sitcom. As you can imagine, I was laughing on both sides of my face after that little incident. Hysterically. For a long time.

But I digress.... why am I telling you a story about a trip we took almost 4 months ago?

Because it was on that trip that I decided to buy a tin of laverbread, a traditional Welsh delicacy that I'd neither eaten, nor used, before. And I only just got round to trying it out. So after checking out various recipes for laverbread cakes, I came up with this one. It's got a higher proportion of oats to laverbread than you often see, mainly because when I opened the laverbread it absolutely stank (and not in a good, brie-esque way). Although I don't know what authentic laverbread cakes are supposed to taste like, these actually turned out to be not half bad.

 

Welsh Laverbread Cakes

Makes 4

Ingredients:

120g laverbread

45g jumbo oats

1 tblsp sunflower oil

Method:

1. Mix together the laverbread and oats.

2. Form into four 'cakes', and fry in the oil in a frying pan on a low-medium heat until the oats are crisp and the laverbread is cooked through (flip half way through the cooking time).

These are traditionally served with bacon, I believe, but wold be lovely with a nice poached egg on top!

Cinnamon Rolls

A tasty breakfast treat: cinnamon rolls

I've always been a big believer in breakfast, possibly because I tend to wake up starving hungry most days! Anyway, whilst breakfast is undoubtedly my favourite meal of the day, I tend to most enjoy super-healthy cereals that a lot of people find boring - weetabix, porridge, muesli and the like.

 

Mr P, on the other hand, is not a fan of breakfast - possibly partly because he often has to leave for work super early in the mornings, and can't face breakfast at that time. Hence one of the recurring dilemmas of our marriage - how to bribe Mr P into breakfast (the other is the annual conundrum of how to jazz up sprouts enough for him to give then a go at Christmas).

 

So far from being a healthy and nutritious start to the day, this recipe is, frankly, a bribe. It's a way to make the breakfast so appealing (and so portable) that there are no excuses to fast until lunch. We particularly enjoy these as a Christmas morning treat with coffee, but they are equally good as lunchbox fillers or as sneaky afternoon pick-me-ups.

 

 

 

 

Cinnamon Rolls

makes 16

from Mary Berry's Complete Cookbook

 

Ingredients:

1kg (2lb) plain flour

60g (2oz) caster sugar

1 x 7g sachet fast action yeast

1 tsp salt

about 350ml (12 fl oz) lukewarm milk

2 eggs, lightly beaten

30g (1oz) butter, melted

250g (8oz) raisins

1 tblsp ground cinnamon

sunflower oil for greasing

milk for glazing

 

For the glaze

100g (4.5 oz) icing sugar (Mary uses double this amount)

2 tblsp water (ditto)

1tsp vanilla extract

 

 

Method:

1. Sift the flour and half of the sugar into a bowl, then stir in the yeast and salt.

 

2. Make a well in the middle. Pour in the milk, eggs, and butter. Stir to make a sticky dough.

 

3. Knead on a lightly floured surface until smooth and elastic.

 

4. Knead in the raisins and half of the cinnamon. This is quite hard work, just to warn you!

 

5. To shape the buns, Mary splits the dough into 16 even sized pieces, then shaps each into a 20-25cm (8-10in strand, before flattening and proceeding as below. I find this quite difficult due to the tendency of the dough to spring back so much, so I split it in half (to make the quantity easier to manage) then roll out each piece separately, then proceed as below.

 

6. Combine the remaining sugar and cinnamon, sprinkle it over your flattened doug, and roll up tightly into spirals. If you used Mary's method, you'll need to do them individually, and if you used my method, then you'll need to do two separate 'swiss rolle' type shapes, then cut them each in half and in half twoce more to get your individual buns.

 

7. Lightly oil two baking trays and arrange the buns on the trays, covering loosely with oiled cling film. Leave to rise in a warm place for about an hour, or until doubled in size.

 

8. Brush the rolls with milk to glaze, then bake in a preheated oven at 190 degrees celcius (375 degrees F/ gas mark 5) for 30-40 minutes until lightly browned. Transfer to a cooling rack.

 

The cinnamon rolls will increase in size as they prove

 

9. To make the glaze, combine all of the ingredients, and brush the rolls with the glaze whilst they are still warm from the oven. I find that it's often necessary to do a second coat once the glaze has dried.

 

10. Serve the buns warm or cold. They will keep well in the freezer for about 3 months.