This recipe comes from my great great grandmother Emma Cooper Bancroft who was American. Having researched this recipe a little I have discovered that the ‘Sally Lunn Bun’ in fact originates from Bath in the west country, just up the road from where I sit today.

• 1 pint milk
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoonfuls of butter or lard
• 1 Cup of yeast (I assume this means fresh, I used 7g dried yeast)
• Flour enough to make a batter as thick as one can stir it

Let it rise five hours or so and pour into “Turk’s Head” and bake for 3/4 of an hour.

Excitingly this recipe has a cooking time! Unfortunately no temperature and, since we did not have a “Turks Head” (a terracotta baking mould, still used on the continent, which produces a bread with a hole in the middle) and therefore made buns it didn’t take 45 minutes – more like 30, at 200 degrees centigrade – but the thought was there!

These buns were dense but a little tasteless.  I would add a good tablespoon of salt in future.  Buttered with a tasty hot soup they were hearty winter food. In Bath the Sally Lunn House purveys these delicacies in various different meals, from dinner to high tea. A trip up the road might be necessary to see how close we came to the real thing…

simple shortbread

The simplest recipe we’ve tried to date, this take on the classic biscuit has only three ingredients.

• 6 oz flour
• 4 oz butter
• 2 oz sugar

Work all together in a basin into a smooth dough with the hand. Roll out on floured board, cut the cake cutter and bake in floured tins.

No problems with this one at all. We used a food processor to mix everything together – which saved a lot of time and effort – and baked at 200 degrees for around 20 mins. It turned out to be absolutely delicious – crumbly but slightly chewy. We found the sweetness of it went especially well with yoghurt. We will certainly be making it again.

This recipe caught my eye for the underlining (italicised here) and for the stern admonition at the end.  Being a novice I made one cake with the smaller quantities as I wouldn’t have wanted to waste good ingredients on a potential failure!

• 3 eggs
• 1/4 lb. flour, well sifted
• 1/4 lb. sugar
• 1/2 gill (1/8 of a pint) water
• 1/2 lemon juiced

for two cakes:

• 7 eggs
• 1/2 lb. flour well sifted
• 3/4 lb. sugar
• 1 gill (1/4 of a pint) water
• 1 lemon juiced.

Let sugar and water come to boiling point, meanwhile thoroughly whip whites and yolks of eggs together. Pour boiling sugar slowly and steadily over the eggs, beating constantly.  Continue beating rapidly until cold.  Gently stir in flour (really just lightly lift it in) and then lemon juice.  Pour into a cake tin which has been well lined with butter paper.  Bake in a moderately high oven.  The novice must not be discouraged by a few failures.  Success will repay all efforts.

This uses store cupboard ingredients and thus is relatively easy to knock up in an afternoon.  The 21st century has made the techniques easier too as the eggs need A LOT of beating: the food processor certainly came into its own making this cake.  Also it is pretty healthy using very little sugar and no fat.

I baked this at 170 degrees centigrade for about 40 minutes though checked regularly from about 20 minutes onwards as the instructions were pretty vague.  I should think the novice would benefit from more precise cooking times but this does not seem to be a strong point of the recipe box.

The resulting cake had risen evenly and looked sponge-like which was a good sign.  It was springier in texture than normal sponge with a tighter crumb and benefited enormously from the addition of raspberry jam, though we managed without cream so not totally negating all the health benefits!

I think this is definitely a hit and will be made again.  Especially good for those with lactose intolerance…