A couple of weeks ago, I bought myself a second-hand copy of Welsh Fare: A Selection of Traditional Recipes by Sara Minwel Tibbott. The author was Assistant Keeper in the Department of Oral Traditions and Dialects at the Welsh Folk Museum – the place at the top of our list of places to visit. We’re really interested in seeing their collection of reconstructed historic buildings and their contents.
First published in 1976, the aim of the book was to:
Collect and record, to study and reflect the folk life of Wales… It is the responsibility of the Welsh Folk Museum, having collected this oral evidence from the oldest inhabitants… not only to preserve this historical information for the benefit of future scholars, but to present it… to contemporary readers as part of their inheritance.
The pages are full of traditional Welsh recipes, accompanied by some wonderful photographs. I chose to make one of the recipes for ffroes (pronounced ‘froies’) or pancakes from Abercynon, Glamorgan. There are half a dozen or more variations of pancake recipes included in the book. There are even more names given over to this dish, depending on the area of the country, county or even district; crempogau, cramoth, grempogau, bancosen, poncagau, pancocs… the list goes on!
They were gorgeous and very, very morish! I’ll be trying out more of the recipes included in the book – probably not the one for ‘Pwdin Gwaed Gwyddau’ (goose-blood pudding) – there’s a host of pudding, bread and cake recipes for me to try!
Click here to save this ffroes recipe to Pinterest
Ffroes
Ingredients
- 450 g/1lb plain flour
- a little salt
- a little organic ground nutmeg
- 85 g/3oz sugar
- 115 g/4oz butter
- 3 eggs
- a little warm milk
- 2 tsp baking powder
Instructions
- Mix the flour, salt, nutmeg and sugar together in a warm basin and then rub in the butter into this dry mixture
- Add a little warm milk to the beaten eggs and gradually pour into the dry ingredients, beating well with a wooden spoon to make a smooth batter. If the batter appears to be too stiff, a little warm milk may be added
- Allow to stand for half an hour, and then fold in the baking powder but do not beat
- Now drop gently from a tablespoon on to a moderately hot, well greased bakestone and bake the pancakes until light brown on both sides
- Put on a plate, spread each with butter and sprinkle with sugar
- Continue to bake with the remainder of the batter in the same way
