Persephone books and cakes - 7

    Those poor Dunnetts! Pop over to Dovegreyreader Scribbles and Lynne will tell you their story, but from the victuals point of view The Children who Lived in a Barn is a sorry tale. They do their best, of course, but rations are meagre so there's a bit of reliance on bread and butter or dripping, the occasional egg, and then the famous haybox, the equivalent of the Aga's simmering oven, by which they manage a rabbit stew and overnight porridge.

    Village neighbours do help, for instance kind Mrs. Dew gives the children "a lovely golden brown cake with pieces of peel sticking up through the surface". I took her gift as my starting point, but went a step further and decided that Eccles Cakes containing peel along with the spiced currants might be just the thing for this month's Persephone tea, and had she had them to hand (and remembering always to 'eat fair'), Susan could have packed one or two to take with her when she went on strike and fatefully met Alastair Grant.

 

    The recipe I used was from The Ordinary Cook (do have a look at all the good things there), and they've turned out beautifully; 500g of pastry yielded fifteen, and there's some filling left over.

Comments

[Barbara]

My copy of this book is an old Puffin edition. I get really angry with the parents! Now to pop over and see what Dovegreyreader says about it.

[Darlene]

A delicious sounding Persephone and your Eccles Cakes are mouthwatering! As a frequently ordered item on Coronation Street I had to look up what they were. Not a treat we come by around our community...pity.

[Lee]

I have never read The Children Who Lived in a Barn but I intend to rectify that soon. One of my favorite books sounds very similar--The Boxcar Children. It has evolved into a whole franchise but I prefer the original--five children without parents who are trying to stay together and live in an old boxcar.

[Kath]

Thank you for the link Cornflower, lots of people have popped over to my site, which is very exciting. Those eccles cakes look very good indeed.

[Cornflower]

You're welcome, Kath, and thankyou so much for the recipe (trouble is, I'm eating too many of them!).