Chorley Cakes

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Large mixing bowl
• •Rolling pin
• •12cm round pastry cutter or a saucer
• •Pastry brush
• •Baking sheet and parchment
• •Wire cooling rack
• •Serrated knife for splitting

Instructions

1. 1

   Make the pastry

   Tip the flour, sugar and salt into a wide bowl. Add the cold cubed butter and rub it in with your fingertips, lifting your hands up out of the bowl as you go to keep things cool. You're after the texture of coarse breadcrumbs with a few flatter flakes of butter still showing. Don't overwork it. Stir in the egg yolk, then add the milk a tablespoon at a time, bringing the dough together with a knife. It should just hold when you press it. Tip it onto the counter, knead it once or twice into a flat disc, wrap it, and rest it in the fridge for twenty minutes.

   Cold hands, cold butter, cold milk. Pastry rewards a cold kitchen. If yours is warm, run your wrists under the tap before you start.
2. 2

   Mix the filling

   Put the currants in a bowl. Pour over the melted butter, scatter in the brown sugar and the mixed spice, and stir until every currant is glossy and the spice has stained the butter. That's the whole filling. No peel, no nuts, no nonsense. A Chorley cake is not an Eccles cake and doesn't want to be.

3. 3

   Roll and cut

   Heat the oven to 200C/180C fan. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Lightly flour your counter and roll the pastry out to about three millimetres thick, no thicker. Cut out eight rounds with a saucer or a large pastry cutter, around twelve centimetres across. Re-roll the offcuts gently if you need to. Pastry doesn't like being handled twice, but once is fine.

4. 4

   Fill and seal

   Spoon a generous tablespoon of currants into the centre of each round. Brush the edges with a little water, then gather the pastry up over the filling like a small purse, pressing the seams firmly to seal. Turn each one over so the seam is underneath, and flatten with the heel of your hand or a rolling pin until it's a thin disc about a centimetre thick. You should just see the dark shapes of the currants pressing through the pastry. That's the look you want.

   If a currant or two breaks through the pastry, leave it. These are home cakes, not patisserie. The little catches of caramelised fruit on the top are part of the pleasure.
5. 5

   Slash, glaze and bake

   Lift the cakes onto the baking sheet. Make two or three short slashes across the top of each with a sharp knife, just enough to break the surface. Brush them with the beaten egg white and scatter a little caster sugar over the top. Bake for eighteen to twenty minutes, until the pastry is pale gold and the sugar has crisped to a faint crackle. Trust your nose. When the kitchen smells of butter and warm currants, they're nearly there.

6. 6

   Cool and serve

   Lift them onto a rack and let them cool until just warm. Split each one through the middle with a serrated knife, spread the cut sides generously with cold salted butter, and lay a thick slice of Lancashire cheese on top. Eat them with strong tea, in the afternoon, with the rain coming down. There are few better feelings than putting a warm plate of these in front of someone who's just come in from outside.

Chef Tips

• •Lancashire cheese is the right cheese for these. Look for a proper crumbly Lancashire, the sort that breaks rather than slices, with a tang that wakes up the sweetness of the currants. A creamy Lancashire works too, but the crumbly is closer to home. If you can't find it, a sharp farmhouse Cheddar will do the job without complaint.
• •Don't be tempted to overfill them. A tablespoon of currants is plenty. Overstuffed Chorley cakes split open in the oven and lose their juice, and you end up with sad pastry rafts. Restraint is the whole skill of this recipe.
• •These are best on the day they're baked, but a Chorley cake reheated for five minutes in a low oven the next morning, then split and buttered, is one of the better breakfasts I know. Don't microwave them. The pastry goes leathery and you've lost the whole point.
• •If you grow your own apples, a thin slice of a sharp eating apple alongside the cheese turns this into something close to a small meal. Not traditional. But the apple, the cheese, and the currants belong in the same room.

Advance Preparation

• •The pastry can be made a day ahead and kept wrapped in the fridge. Let it sit out for ten minutes before rolling so it doesn't crack.
• •The currant filling can be mixed several hours ahead and left covered at room temperature. The currants will drink up the spiced butter and be the better for it.
• •Baked Chorley cakes keep in an airtight tin for two days. Refresh them in a low oven before serving. They don't freeze especially well; the pastry loses its short, biscuity quality.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 95g)