Neither a pancake nor a biscuit, welshcakes are make with soft pastry-like dough, cut into pretty little two-bite rounds and baked on the griddle, known in other parts of Wales as a planc.   Welshcakes are quick to make and bake and even quicker to vanish once set on the table. They're best eaten fresh but keep very well in a tin.  Jane likes them cool but I prefer them warm. Each to her own. 

 

Makes about 2 dozen

 

500g self-raising flour
50g butter
125g caster sugar
125g sultanas and/or raisins
2 medium eggs

Rub the butter into the flour with the tips of your fingers as if making pastry, and mix in the fruit and sugar. Fork up the eggs with their own volume of water (measure with an eggshell) and work the liquid into the flour-mix till you have a soft but still rollable dough - you may need a little more water. 
    Tip the dough onto a well-floured board and roll it out to the thickness of a couple of pound-coins - about 50mm. Cut into rounds with a shell-edged biscuit-cutter or sharp-edged teacup.
    Heat a griddle or a heavy frying pan - get the heat up into it gently and thoroughly, and don’t let it overheat - and wipe over with a butter-soaked rag. Slip the cakes onto the hot metal, wait till the underside is browned and the surface begins to look dry, then turn them gently and brown the other side. Allow  6-8 minutes in all.  Eat them warm spread with salty Welsh butter - or not, since there’s butter in the mix already.   Store in an airtight tin and freshen them up in the toaster.

 

Recipe from A Cook's Year