Banbury Cakes

There's a particular kind of grey afternoon, sometime in late October or November, when the light goes thin by three o'clock and you start looking for a reason to put the oven on. This is that reason.

Banbury cakes have been made in Oxfordshire since at least 1586, which I know because I looked it up once, but the truth is they don't taste of history. They taste of butter and spice and dark, sticky fruit, and they've outlasted four centuries because they're worth the trouble. They're cousins to the Eccles cake, but older and more generously spiced. The filling is darker, the rum optional but recommended, the currants a little drunker.

I make a batch when I want the house to smell like something is happening. The pastry goes into the oven and within ten minutes the kitchen has changed character. By the time they come out, golden and crackling with demerara, the afternoon has decided what it wants to be. Tea, a warm pastry, a chair near the window. We're only making dinner, except sometimes we're not even doing that. Sometimes a cake at four o'clock is the whole point.

I wrote it down in the notebook the first time I made them: "Banbury cakes. November. Wet outside. Worth it." The note hasn't aged.