Reading nook 📖

Lardy cake is a slab of enriched dough laminated with handfuls of lard, sugar, and dried fruit, folded and rolled and folded again, then baked until the lard caramelises through every layer and the bottom of the tin is a sticky golden mess. It is the cake equivalent of a croissant invented in Wiltshire by farmers who had a pig and some flour and no time for nonsense. Modern versions almost universally use butter or vegetable shortening instead of lard. Both are inferior. Lard has a higher melting point than butter, so it does not soak into the dough during baking the same way - it pockets, melts, and creates the distinct flaky pastry layer that defines a proper lardy cake. Lardy cake is also one of the oldest British uses for pig fat, made the same way for at least three hundred years until the fat panic of the 1980s recast lard as poison. Bakers switched to butter or industrial shortening, the texture went flat, and a cheap farmhouse treat became a sad imitation of itself. The recipe: - 500g strong white flour. - 7g instant yeast. - 1 teaspoon salt. - 300ml warm milk. - 200g pure lard, kept cold. - 150g caster sugar. - 200g mixed dried fruit (currants, raisins, sultanas). - A pinch of mixed spice. Mix the flour, yeast, salt, and milk into a soft dough. Knead 8 minutes. Rise covered for an hour. Roll into a long rectangle. Dot a third of the lard, sugar, fruit, and spice over two-thirds of the dough. Fold like a letter. Turn 90 degrees. Repeat twice more. Press into a greased deep tin. Rise 45 minutes. Bake at 200C for 30 to 35 minutes. Turn out upside down so all the caramelised lard runs back into the cake. The bottom will be sticky. The top will be flaky. The smell will fill the house. A wedge of this with a strong cup of tea was the Wiltshire farmer's three o'clock break. We have a Pret protein ball.

Source: YouTube https://share.google/4gKHaPUwbWKyN3Jj3

Spicy Pickled Green Beans Recipe - The Herbeevore https://theherbeevore.com/spicy-pickled-green-beans-recipe-vegan-gluten-free/#recipe