MANY SIZES FIT ALL

 Say what you like about the people of Yorkshire, but when it comes to dessert, we are not chauvinistic.  All the years I was growing up in Sheffield, we thought of an Eccles cake, a thoroughly Lancashire creation, as a perfectly acceptable way to round off a meal.  

The Oxford Companion to Food describes an Eccles cake as ‘similar to BANBURY CAKES except that they are normally round in shape and the filling has fewer ingredients’ – so not really all that similar at all, and I have never knowingly eaten a Banbury cake.

 

Fergus Henderson and the lads at St John evidently like an Eccles cake too and serve it with a triangle of Lancashire cheese, which is as it should be.

 

Here’s one I ate earlier:

Until recently my local Co-op here in Essex sold Eccles cakes and I bought them regularly, but lately they’ve not been on the shelves.  Whether this is a change of policy or just a hiccup in the supply chain I’m not sure, but I suppose time will tell.

 

Fortunately the so-called farmer’s market up at the local garden centre is now stocking giant Eccles cakes, which are frankly too big for my needs but it’s no great trouble to cut them in half or thirds or whatever.

The garden centre is also selling Chorley cakes – with which I was unfamiliar. The Oxford Companion describes them as a variation on the Eccles cake but ‘usually somewhat plainer.’  

In fact the Chorley cakes I bought are made by the same people who make the standard size Eccles cake but the difference is significant, and these are better in my opinion, being less sweet. Apparently one recommendation is to serve them buttered which strikes me as going a little too far, but different strokes for different folks, and all that.