Lardy Cake

Lardy cake is a traditional enriched bread of the southern English counties, principally Hampshire, Wiltshire and Berkshire, where it has been baked since at least the 18th century. Its defining ingredient is lard, the rendered pig fat that was the cheapest cooking fat of the rural south, where every household kept a pig. The dough is a bread dough enriched with sugar, lard and dried fruit, then repeatedly folded and layered with more lard, sugar and sometimes currants, like a rough puff, so that the finished bake is full of sticky, caramelised layers. It was a harvest and feast-day bake, made when the bread oven was lit for the week's loaves, and the extra fat and sugar turned plain bread into a treat. It is closely related to the lardy bread of Nottinghamshire and to the West Country's hunny cake. The bake is dense, sticky and very sweet, eaten in slabs, often still warm, and is now a specialty of traditional bakeries rather than the home.

A dense, sticky, syrup-soaked slab pulled apart in layers, each one caramelised at the edges and studded with currants, rich with lard and brown sugar. Eaten warm, in fingers, ridiculously sweet and moreish.

Lardy cake is essentially a lamination of bread dough with lard and sugar. A strong bread dough is made with flour, yeast, water and a little sugar, proved once, then rolled out. Lard, sugar and currants are spread over two thirds of the surface, the dough folded in three like a letter, rolled out again, and the process repeated three or four times, with short rests. Each fold adds layers of fat and sugar; in the bake, the fat fries the dough from within while the sugar caramelises, producing the dense, sticky, layered texture. The final shape is a slab baked in a tin, and after baking it is often turned out upside down so the syrupy bottom becomes the top. The dough needs a hot-ish oven, around 200 degrees C, to set the bread structure before the sugar burns, and a careful watch on the base.