Spiced Chocolate Chip Welsh Cakes

I got a cough, I know what you’re thinking, is that special news? Maybe not special but it’s definitely news. I never get coughs, and when I say never I mean never, blocked sinuses yes coughs not so much. I say cough, I’m pretty sure it was a chest infection because there was dizziness, a fever, everything ached and all kinds of funky coloured stuff being coughed up, there was also a little bit of throwing up but we won’t get into that. I spent the majority of my week moving from my room to the living room in a constant state of napping with random TV shows in the background I didn’t care to pay attention to, which if you know me is also really rare because I really despise naps. I also spent two days only whispering and another sounding like I’d been strangled so all around it wasn’t a pleasant time!

One of the other problems I had was I completely lost my appetite, I always find it takes a while to go back to eating normally after that but the first thing that made me want to eat more than a bowl of rice or soup was some Welsh cakes my mum bought, so after that I just had to make some.
It’s probably been about 4 years since I’ve made Welsh cakes, aside from the 3 batches I’ve cooked up in the past week but the day I made these just coincidentally happened to be St. David’s day. I did test out another flavour which is all of the yummy and will be posted at some point in the future but I couldn’t resist adding chocolate to a batch (well I had to make up for all the chocolate I missed out on while I was ill), I’m surprised it’s never crossed my mind before and I also couldn’t resist adding all of the spices.

Something that Welsh cakes are ideal for is snacks on the go, they travel extremely well and don’t take up a lot of room, not that we had any time to take them out for a snack as they didn’t last long enough but if you can resist them till the next day they keep well and you can’t really squish them as easy as a muffin.
You will need
115g/4 oz/½ cup butter/margarine
225g/8 oz/1¾ cups self raising flour
85g/3 oz/⅓ cup caster sugar
½ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
¼ tsp mixed spice
⅛ tsp ground ginger
100g/3½ oz dark chocolate, chopped
1 medium - large free range egg
1 tbsp caster sugar + 1 tsp ground cinnamon or cinnamon sugar

Rub the butter/marg into the flour to make breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, spices and chocolate then add the egg and mix until a dough forms.
Dust your worktop with flour and roll out the dough until 5mm-1cm thick and cut into circles with a 7.5-10cm/3-4in cutter, I used an 8cm. Re roll the dough until it’s all gone.
On a preheated and greased iron griddle, bakestone or heavy bottomed frying pan cook the Welsh cakes on a low heat, until caramel brown on each side. They need about 2-3 minutes each side.
Remove from the pan and dust with cinnamon sugar while still warm.

Makes 10-12