Welsh cakes

Name: Welsh cakes
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 8 servings
Cuisine: British
Ingredients: Plain flour; Unsalted butter; Caster sugar; 1 medium egg; Currants; Baking powder; Salt; Semi-skimmed milk

225 kcal a serving, against 292 for the traditional version. That is 67 kcal off, or 23%, with 4.4g of protein. Serves 8. 35 minutes.

What the traditional version is

The usual mix is plain flour, a heap of cold butter and lard, sugar, an egg, and a tumble of currants. The dough is patted into rounds and cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan. A quick flip, a sprinkle of sugar, and you're snacking like you're hiking up Pen y Fan in driving rain.

What changed, and what each change costs

Lard out; keep just butter, but less of it, and add milk

Lard gives Welsh cakes that signature crumbly softness. If you ditch it and drop the butter too, you can't just dry out the dough - so add a splash of semi-skimmed milk to wet things up. The result is a bit cakier, a bit less rich, and not so soft after they've cooled. Nobody will mistake this for bakery gold, but they still beat supermarket imports hollow.

What it costs you. You lose the melt-in-the-mouth crumb and the savoury undertone lard brings. Day one, they're respectable. By day two, chewiness creeps in. Don't expect leftovers to win any texture prizes.

Cut the frying butter back to the meanest slick you dare

The original recipe fries each batch in a good knob of butter, which is a big part of the smell (and calories). Just use enough to stop things sticking and call it a win.

What it costs you. You don't get the glistening golden finish. They look plainer and less inviting. On the other hand, it saves you 80 kcal and half a tea towel's worth of grease.

What goes in it

The ingredients, without the quantities. The weights are what the figures below are computed from, and they are in the book.

Plain flour
Unsalted butter
Caster sugar
1 medium egg
Currants
Baking powder
Salt
Semi-skimmed milk

How it starts

Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.
Stir in the sugar and currants.
Lightly flour your worktop.

The rest of the method, and every weight, is in Authentic-ish British.

The numbers

Per serving	Traditional	Lightened
Calories	292	225
Protein	4.3g	4.4g
Fat	13.8g	6.1g
Saturated fat	6.8g	3.5g
Carbohydrate	38.3g	38.6g
Protein per 100 kcal	1.5g	2g

Every figure is computed from the recipe's own weighed ingredient list against public food composition databases. The appendix in Authentic-ish British prints the exact database row used for each ingredient, so any number here can be checked. How every number is computed sets out the method.

Allergens. gluten, milk, eggs.

The method is in the book

These are Welsh cakes for those who want a nod to tradition but need to save a bit of room for the next course. They're not as rich or short as the lard-and-butter classics, and you won't get the same soft middle if you eat them cold. Still, they're full of currants, light enough that you can have two with your tea, and you can actually make them on a Tuesday afternoon without needing a nap. If you really can't bear the absence of lard, make the real thing, eat two, and give the rest to your neighbours.

The quantities and the method for this dish are in Authentic-ish British, along with 56 more. Buy the paperback