Chelsea cakes for London Design Week

ESPRESSO DESIGN’S CHELSEA CAKES

Espresso Design recently opened a fabulous new showroom in the gorgeous Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour and they asked me to come up with some tasty treats for launch week. I love Welsh cakes - yummy little dry-fried currant cakes sprinkled with sugar, so I decided to create a spicy Chelsea Bun inspired version with cinnamon and brown sugar.  I think they liked it - over 400 cakes disappeared over London Design Week, and pictures of the little heart shaped cakes were all over social media. 

The dough can be made in advance and kept in the fridge for a day if you need to. Makes approximately 30 cakes.

220g self raising flour

½ tsp mixed spice

¼ cinnamon

80g golden caster sugar plus more for dredging

100g butter, diced

40g sultanas

1 egg yolk

4 tbsp. milk

1 tsp vanilla essence

Sift the flour, spice, cinnamon and sugar into a large bowl. Add in the diced butter and mix to coat it with flour. Using your fingers, carefuly rub the butter in to the dry ingredients until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sultanas. Mix the egg yolk in a small bowl with the milk and vanilla essence, then using a knive, stir it into the flour mixture, until it makes a soft dough. If it’s very dry, add another tablespoon of milk.

Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll out until it’s about 1cm thick. Cut out 4cm wide shapes (I use a star or heart cutter, but a round one will work just as well)  gather up the offcuts, re-roll and cut out more shapes. Keep going until you have used all the dough.

Heat a frying pan or griddle and grease it very slightly. Cook the Chelsea cakes in batches for 1-2 minutes on each side until they are nicely golden, then dredge with caster sugar and eat warm.