Brielle's Avalon

AKA Bakestones, because they were baked on a bakestone or griddle on the fire or stovetop and apparently they’re also called pics or occasionally even griddle-scones. I love finding cool things to make based on my ancestry and my ancestry is sufficiently varied to give me years of discovering and cooking/baking/gardening.

I made a 1/2 recipe this time but next time it’ll be a full recipe.

2c flour

1/3 c caster sugar (finer than granulated sugar, just zap regular granulated sugar in the blender for a bit to make the pieces smaller)

1 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tap Mace

1/4 tsp Salt

1/8 tsp Cinnamon

2 oz lard (I used bacon fat this time)

2 oz Butter

1/2 c dried currants (I used dried cranberries because I had them and some raisins)

1 lg egg

2-3 Tbsp milk

Granulated sugar to dust with after they’re cooked

Mix the dry ingredients together. OK, mix the dry ingredients THEN add the fats.

Cut the fats in until it’s like grainy meal.

Add the dried currants or dried cranberries or raisins or what-have-you.

Beat an egg and mix it in, adding a tablespoon of milk or 2 as you mix to make it all come together.

Wrap it in waxed paper and refrigerate for at least an hour…overnight or a day is fine, too.

Roll out on lightly flour-dusted waxed paper (helps with the clean-up) and cut out rounds with a cookie cutter. I couldn’t find my plain one so I used the fancy one with the crinkly edges.

While you’re rolling and cutting heat up your cast iron pan, then add a knob of butter and fry them up.

When they’re nicely browned dredge the warm cakes in granulated sugar. It’s OK if you want to skip this step and they’re probably easier to re-warm the next day without the sugar.

Then enjoy with tea or whatever.

I’ll definitely be making these for tea again, probably something I’ll mix up the night before and foll out when I’m ready for tea the next day. Using bacon fat from the fridge instead of lard didn’t hurt them at all. I haven’t used mace much but it is a delightfully different spice in baking and these go well with tea. They also go well with a nice red wine so these would make a good dessert or sweet tapas-kind-of-thing. They’d also go well after lunch ham sandwiches or a ham dinner. I love that, as with lefse, I get to use my cast iron for this.

You can leave off the sugar, add cinnamon to the sugar, use vanilla-infused sugar, eat them plain (with or without sugar), split them open and butter them or add jam or cream or…any yummy tea-time stuff you can think of.