Spending a bit of time again in Scotland, and it allowed me to find another delicacy that would go well with a nice cup of tea – Ecclefechan Tart.

The tart was traditionally made right across the south of Scotland, and I am wondering where it was hiding while I was walking the Southern Upland Way, however it is named after the town of Ecclefechan situated midway between Lockerbie and Annan in Dumfries and Galloway.

Ecclefechan Tart gained national recognition in late 2007 when Sainsbury’s promoted it as an alternative to mince pies for Christmas. The tarts proved to be very popular with over 50,000 packs sold in November alone, and I can quite understand why.  The tart has a texture reminiscent of pecan pie but is spiced with cinnamon and lemon peel and studded with raisins.

Delicious!

Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer is a bar of pure deliciousness, consisting of 5 layers of wafer as a way of separating 4 good layers of caramel – and completely covered in chocolate. It is then wrapped in a classy foil-paper wrapper, instead of the terrible plastic coatings that are nowadays often used.

Both milk and plain chocolate version are available. The milk chocolate version is wrapped in red and gold coloured foil-paper, whilst the plain chocolate wrapping is coloured blue and gold.

The wrappers (of the milk chocolate version) bear the proud words: “more than 4,000,000 of these biscuits made and sold every week”. I dare say a comparable number are also eaten! Quite a few kept me going on the long days of walking the Southern Upland Way.

There is a closely related product: Tunnock’s Caramel Log, which is similar to the Caramel Wafer but with the addition of desecrated coconut* to the outside of the bar and with a plastic wrapper. Why anyone would want to do this to a perfectly delicious bar remains a mystery to me – it is almost sacrilege.

* often referred to as roasted or dessicated coconut; in my book any alterations made to delicious fresh coconut is effectively desecration.

Or more specifically, Botham’s of Whitby original Whitby Gingerbread.

It is exactly what it says on the tin wrapper:

Gingerbread has been made in Whitby for the seafaring community since time immemorial, its good keeping qualities making it ideal for taking to sea. In 1865 when Elizabeth Botham began baking, gingerbread was naturally one of her first products.
It is not a sticky cake but a firm loaf with a texture between a bread and a biscuit. Today we enjoy it thinly sliced, buttered and served with a while farmhouse cheese, lemon curd, honey or preserves.

I was intrigued to find Whitby Gingerbread while walking the Pennine Way, as I was nowhere near Whitby. I thought it might well go well with a cup of tea, and being of a firm texture I suspected it might also travel well in a rucksack – and it did. So I investigated further…

The gingerbread is not particularly sweet, and as such is able to take both sweet and savoury accompaniments particularly well. Its firm texture also allows it to be easily buttered, even with butter which is relatively unyielding. It may well also be possible to lightly toast the gingerbread, though out on top of a fell I was without a toaster and unable to test this theory.

Whitby Gingerbread has a long history, and I for one hope it has a long future.

While walking the Pennine Way I was in need of sustenance to keep me going through the day. While I found some good biscuits, cake is less prone to disintegrating (or at least more easily squished back together). Having spent quite a while wandering along the route through Yorkshire I was pleased to find a supply of Parkin, a cake with strong local connections.

Parkin is generally a moist, and even sometimes sticky, gingercake – and is readily distinguishable from other (lesser) gingercakes by the high proportion of oatmeal and treacle used in its making.

It is also said to keep well, though why you would want to do this with such a delicious cake I am unsure – however it is said that ‘connoisseurs often prefer to eat it slightly aged’.

Parkin is also strongly associated with Bonfire Night, but after consuming the cake pictured above during mid May I am able to confirm that it can also be enjoyed at any other times of year.

In walking the Pennine Way I spent quite a while within Yorkshire – with the opportunity to try some of the wonderful delights on offer that go well with a nice cup of tea.

I had occasionally seen Yorkshire Tea Biscuits advertised on TV, but never found a good supply of them. In Hawes I was delighted to find numerous shelves fully stocked with a wondrous range of these biscuits, though disappointingly I probably only had room for two packets of biscuits in my rucksack, so I chose the Original and Chocolate Chip varieties – leaving the Oat & Honey and Ginger ones for another time.

Yorkshire Tea Biscuits are basically a rich buttery shortbread biscuit, but there is nothing basic about them. Much thought has obviously gone into the crafting and baking of these biscuits, and the result is a chunky T shape – which makes it ideal for dunking (as does the solid texture of the shortbread).

While the T shape is good for dunking it is bad for packing, and thus the amount of packaging to biscuit ratio is high – which results in each biscuit probably having a greater than average carbon footprint (which is particularly disappointing for such an excellent biscuit).

A hint of Yorkshire Tea has also been baked into each original Yorkshire Tea Biscuit, to great effect – adding a delicate flavour note. The hint of tea might well be included in the other varieties – though of the Chocolate Chip variety my tastebuds were rapidly seduced by the large chocolaty chips, at the expense of some of the other delicate flavours.

Having tried to approach the tasting of Yorkshire Tea Biscuits in the most scientific way possible (for a hungry walker) I have to admit to running out of biscuits before completing the rigorous dunk test timings – though I am happy to report that they held up well (to the dunking, but not to a hungry walker!).

Cornish Fairings truly are ‘A taste that’s out of Cornwall‘, and it is a great shame that they are not more widely available – considering that they have been a Cornish favourite for over 100 years. It was only a few years ago that they almost became an endangered species when the factory was forced to close due to lack of demand – which would have been a great tragedy for Fairings fans. Thankfully someone saw sense and they were rescued.

It all began in Truro in the 1880s, when John Cooper Furniss began producing Fairings, gingerbreads and other goods from a teashop in Truro. His original recipe is for a lightly spiced biscuit, perfect on its own or with tea. Others in the current range include orange & lemon, stem ginger & honey, and apple & cinnamon, and are all excellent additions to the range.

The original Fairings are similar to Gingernuts, but have a more delicate cinnamon and mixed spice flavour. They are quite hard and brittle, but are excellent dunkers – becoming deliciously soft and slightly chewy with the application of tea (probably due to the expert use of Golden Syrup in the recipe).

The name ‘Fairing’ comes form a present brought at the fairs which were held every year at Whitsuntide and Corpus Christie – a little gift consisting of gingerbread, sugared almonds, cinnamon sticks or macaroons.

I for one will be doing my best to ensure that demand remains high for the superb biscuit of Cornwall – the Cornish Fairing.

It was not until 1615 that tea was first mentioned in British literature, and it was the British who took it all over the world and cultivated it in large quantities in India and Africa.

At the forefront of novel plant introductions the Tregothnan Estate began the search for the perfect tea when it was recently shown that high quality tea could thrive in Cornwall.

Now I just have to find some Cornish Fairings biscuits…

Welshcakes can be traced back in time to one of the earliest forms of baking, where a flatstone would be placed onto an open fire and small flat cakes would be griddled on top of the hot stone.

It is a shame that they are not more widely available outside of their native Wales as they make a fine accompaniment to a nice cup of tea.

Welshcakes are made from the simplest of ingredients: flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and currants, and are roughly circular, a couple of inches in diameter and about half an inch thick. The cakes can be eaten hot or cold, with or without butter and/or jam, but are seldom split in half like their scone cousins.

With so many variations, and just one packet of cakes, I was unable to test all the permutations for which I apologise (I promise to do better next time).  However, and without doubt, I can already confirm that these little cakes from Wales are worthy of a place beside a nice cup of tea.

Toffee waffles are impressive biscuits: two waffles sandwich a layer of lightly-spiced toffee. There are said to be chocolate species, which are entirely coated in either milk or plain chocolate, though I have yet to track these down.

The toffee centre to the biscuit adds an intriguing dimension, as the properties of the toffee change with temperature. At room temperature it is soft and gooey, though at the top of a welsh mountain in early spring the toffee is much firmer and deliciously chewy. These properties can be manipulated when coupled with a nice cup of tea – a little heating over a mug of tea will cause the toffee to become runnier.

Toffee waffles are native to Wales, where they are probably more abundant. Outside of Wales they are fairly rare but can be order directly from the Tregroes Waffle web site.

Cornwall is one of the few places in the UK where saffron is used to make cakes and buns, though similar delicacies can be found in a few places around the world.

Saffron cake is a rich yeast dough cake that is flavoured with saffron and contains currants. With the delicate saffron flavour also comes the rich and distinctive yellow colour to the cake.

Traditionally saffron cakes were only made at Easter time, though thankfully they are now available to enjoy all year round with a cup of tea!