dcf.cymru stimulus sheet · Design Technology · Year 8

Welsh cakes — picau ar y maen

This recipe is written the way recipes normally are: as prose, with steps hidden inside sentences. Your job is to turn it into an algorithm.

Makes 12 to 14 cakes · about 35 minutes

Ingredients

Amount Ingredient
225 gself-raising flour
110 gcold butter, cut into cubes
85 gcaster sugar
50 gcurrants or sultanas
½ teaspoonmixed spice
1egg, beaten
up to 2 tablespoonsmilk — only if the dough will not come together
a little extrabutter for greasing, caster sugar for dusting

Equipment

Method

Weigh the flour into the bowl and add the cubed butter. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs with no lumps of butter left in it. Stir in the sugar, the currants and the mixed spice.

Pour in the beaten egg and mix to a firm dough. If it is still crumbly and will not hold together, add milk a tablespoon at a time and mix again — but stop as soon as it comes together, because too much milk makes the dough sticky and the cakes tough.

Dust the worktop with flour, roll the dough out to about 5 mm thick and cut out rounds with the 6 cm cutter. Gather up the offcuts, roll them again and cut more rounds. Keep going until the dough is used up; you should get 12 to 14 rounds.

Grease the bakestone lightly and heat it over a medium heat. Too hot and the outsides burn before the middles cook; too cool and the cakes dry out. Cook the rounds a few at a time, about 2 to 3 minutes on the first side. Lift the edge of one with the fish slice and look underneath: it should be golden brown. If it is still pale, give it another 30 seconds and look again. When it is golden, turn it over and cook the second side for 2 to 3 minutes.

Move the cooked cakes to the cooling rack and dust them with caster sugar while they are still warm. Carry on cooking batches until every round is done. Eat warm or store in an airtight tin for up to three days.

Safety and hygiene notes