Ingredients

500 g spelt flour , plus extra for rolling

100 g dark brown, unprocessed sugar

2 T cinnamon

1/2 t vanilla

1 t baking powder

225 g vegan butter or coconut fat

1 T Alba oil

A pinch of sea salt

1 handful berberis berries

1 T chia seeds soaked in 2 T water

1 T whiskey

a couple of splashes of plant milk

Method

Mix the flour, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, baking powder and salt in a bowl and then crumble the butter or coconut oil. You might want to use a food processor if using coconut oil as it is somewhat hard. 

Add the chia egg, the whiskey and a bit of milk and knead to form a soft dough. Add more milk if necessary, but make sure the dough does not get too wet.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface to 1/2 – 1 cm thick and cut out rounds with a glass. You should be able to stack these without them sticking together, dust with flour if in doubt.

Heat a non stick pan or griddle on medium heat. When the pan is hot, make a test cake. Flip it after a few min when it looks sturdy enough. It should be lightly browned/golden. Cook in batches and transfer to a wire rack lined with kitchen paper.

Notes

T = Tablespoon

t = teaspoon

Spelt flour is commonly used in Germany. Spelt is a type of wheat which has not been a significantly altered by human tampering and is considered healthier by some. It was praised by Hildegard von Bingen.

Unprocessed sugar still contains a lot of the natural nutrients, but it’s dark colour will effect the appearance of your dough. If that bothers you, you can obviously sub with normal sugar.

Cinnamon is optional and can be omitted or replaced with other spices.

Vanilla if using vanilla extract, i recommend 1 t

Baking powder can be omitted if using self-raising flour

Coconut oil I used refined coconut oil, but virgin would also work in this recipe if you like the flavour. Omit the Alba oil if using virgin coconut oil.

Alba Oil is a type of rapeseed oil from Sweden with butter flavour. You can leave this out if it is unavailable.

Berberis Berries are sour berries often used in Persian cooking. In Medieval times, they were used in Europe too. Obviously these are optional but if you use sweet dried fruit you might want to reduce the sugar to 75 gr, depending upon how sweet you like things of course. You could also use orange peel.

Chia Seeds are used to replace egg in this recipe. You can also use ground linseed.

Welsh Cakes are griddle cakes containing raisins popular in Wales.  I used to love them and found myself craving them one morning, so went about veganising them. As it’s getting near Christmas I decided to add cinnamon. I didn’t have any dried fruit besides cranberries and these berberitz berries I’d bought during Middle Eastern week in Lidl, so I decided to try them.

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