All Souls' Day is today and Stella requested soul cakes. If you're in the mood for some seasonal baking, soul cakes might be just the thing.
Preheat your oven to 400.
To two cups of flour, add 1/2 t. salt, 1/2 t. baking soda, 1.5 t. baking powder, 1 T. sugar, and approximately a heaping teaspoon of fall-flavored spices. I used Kafe Hawaij with extra cinnamon. Stir your dry ingredients together and sprinkle in a handful of raisins or currants. Cut a stick of butter into small cubes and rub them briskly into your flour mixture. Add about 2/3 c. buttermilk, or ordinary milk to which you've added a splash of vinegar. Stir gently and tip onto a floured surface. Knead gently until it coheres (don't overdo it or you'll have tough soul cakes). Pat it out to about a half-inch thickness and cut out circles with an upside-down glass. It's traditional to cut a cross into the tops of your cakes. Brush with egg wash, if you like, and bake for 20 minutes.
For reasons that are opaque to me, all the soul cake recipes that come up for me in Google are unleavened, yielding a "cake" that I find unpleasantly brick-like. Sure, they would have been unleavened six hundred years ago. Also six hundred years ago people were serving up roast peacock for festive occasions. I do not wish to eat a peacock; I do not wish to eat a pile of unleavened flour. Modern cooking, I embrace it.
These are speedy enough to serve for breakfast; they also make a welcome afternoon snack.
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