Eccles Cakes

Dessert · British classic.

Ingredients

• 250g Butter
• 350g Plain Flour
• Juice of 1/2 Lemon
• 25g Butter
• 200g Currants
• 50g Mixed Peel
• 100g Muscovado Sugar
• 1 tsp Cinnamon
• 1 tsp Ginger
• 1 tsp Allspice
• Zest of 1 Lemon
• 1 beaten Eggs
• spinkling Sugar

Method

1. Continue cooking — To make the pastry, dice the butter and put it in the freezer to go really hard.
2. Continue cooking — Tip flour into the bowl of a food processor with half the butter and pulse to the texture of breadcrumbs.
3. Continue cooking — Pour in the lemon juice and 100ml iced water, and pulse to a dough.
4. Continue cooking — Tip in the rest of the butter and pulse a few times until the dough is heavily flecked with butter.
5. Continue cooking — It is important that you don’t overdo this as the flecks of butter are what makes the pastry flaky.
6. Roll out — On a floured surface roll the pastry out to a neat rectangle about 20 x 30cm.
7. Continue cooking — Fold the two ends of the pastry into the middle (See picture 1), then fold in half (pic 2).
8. Roll out — Roll the pastry out again and refold the same way 3 more times resting the pastry for at least 15 mins each time between roll and fold, then leave to rest in the fridge for at least 30 mins before using.
9. Continue cooking — To make the filling, melt the butter in a large saucepan.
10. Mix together — Take it off the heat and stir in all the other ingredients until completely mixed, then set aside.
11. Roll out — To make the cakes, roll the pastry out until it’s just a little thicker than a £1 coin and cut out 8 rounds about 12cm across.
12. Mix together — Re-roll the trimming if needed. Place a good heaped tablespoon of mixture in the middle of each round, brush the edges of the rounds with water, then gather the pastry around the filling and squeeze it together (pic 3).

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