September’s Sourdough Surprises is Crumpets, English Muffins and Welsh Cakes.

Much as I’d love to MAKE ALL THE THINGS I’m going to be sensible and just stick to doing Welsh Cakes — a favourite snack in our house, although I usually only make them for St David’s Day. Now I’ve got another excuse to make them!

I normally use a double batch of BBC Good Food’s recipe, so I’ll start with that and adjust it to:

• 400g plain flour
• 170g golden caster sugar
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 100g unsalted butter, cold
• 100g lard, cold
• 100g currants
• 1 large egg (US jumbo)
• 100g refreshed 100% hydration sourdough starter
• Oil spray for frying
• White caster sugar for coating

The flour and sugar get mixed together, then the fats are cut into them.

Then the currants get mixed in.

Finally the egg and sourdough bring the dough together.

The dough is rollout out pretty thick, and cakes get cut out.

I’m then going to leave these to rise for a few hours (in the cat-proof cage) before frying them.

They get fried in a non-stick pan with lard.

Then coated with sugar while they’re still hot.

Repeat a few times, and we have ourselves a batch of sourdough Welsh cakes!

As they wouldn’t all fit on the cooling rack we were forced to eat some of them while they were still warm :D

Do they have a slightly sour background note to them? Maybe. Is the structure slightly different from normal Welsh cakes? Possibly. Hard to tell without having a regular batch to test them against, and as tempting as that is, I’m going to once again restrain myself!

For now we’ll just have to be content with delicious Welsh cakes, possibly with some homemade jam on them later, but for now they’re going back in cat-proof cage.

 

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Check out all the other entries to this month’s Sourdough Surprise!