How To Make The Perfect Traditional Eccles Cakes

How to make traditional Eccles cakes, a true British classic, but there are some real good tips. So if you don't want flat nasty Eccles cakes, stay tuned. What you're going to first off need is 50 grams of butter in a saucepan, along with 150 grams of currants, 50 grams of light brown sugar, one teaspoon of mixed spice, along with half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and the zest of one whole orange. I will link the zester that I use in the bio because it's really useful. And then you squeeze the orange and place one tablespoon only of the orange juice, melt it down on the stove until it comes together nice and thick. Now top tip number one, make sure you cool this mixture down properly so that it's really thick and cold before you put in pastry, otherwise it will go flat. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees centigrade and line a tray with baking paper. Now this is the tip, this is the one you need to know. It's all about the quality of the puff pastry. On the right is proper all butter puff pastry. Beware of what you are buying in the supermarkets. Turn it over, look at the ingredients. It may look like they contain butter but often they don't, not any of it. So just flour down your surface, pop down your pastry and I'm doing two sizes today. I'm doing some dainty little eight centimeter ones for afternoon tea and some of the bigger ones but the technique is exactly the same. Just use your cutter to cut it out or as you can see here I'm using a bigger one for the good old man-sized pack up ones for my husband and they are around about 10 centimeters but as I said the system is exactly the same. So what you're going to do is roll those out into the shapes, place them on your baking tray or on your surface and add a little bit of the current mixture. Do not overfill because it will just splurt out. Then you're going to pull up all the sides, they look like little miniature dumplings and then just turn them over and flatten them slightly. Then take a knife and slice three slashes. This is to let the steam out but also some say it represents the holy trinity of the Christian church. Glaze with egg all over the top and around the sides and then my favourite bit, yes you want to sprinkle on some sugar. I'm using demerara sugar but you could just use granulated sugar. You want to pop them in the oven for around about 15 to 20 minutes. My oven only takes 15 so do keep an eye on them but they will come out absolutely glorious, delicious and I hope you enjoy this recipe and if you want the written recipe I will link all the details in the bio.