 Fat rascals at Bettys Cafe Tearooms | |
| Alternative names | Turf cake (historical) |
|---|---|
| Type | Cake/biscuit |
| Place of origin | England |
| Region or state | Yorkshire |
| Main ingredients | Currants and candied peel |
A fat rascal, closely related to the historical turf cake, is a type of cake, similar to a scone or rock cake in both taste and ingredients. It originated in Yorkshire at least as early as the 19th century.
Fat rascals were known in the Yorkshire region in the nineteenth century as a form of tea cake containing butter and cream. [1] An 1859 Charles Dickens story identifies the fat rascal with the singing hinny of Northumberland. [2] A fat rascal could also be baked as a turf cake, a buttery, flat cake baked in a covered pan among the ashes of a peat fire, [3] and the terms fat rascal and turf cake are sometimes used interchangeably. A Yorkshire cookery book of 1973 had plain flour, baking powder, butter and currants as the ingredients. [4] A 1980 Yorkshire cookbook described fat rascals as a means of using leftover pastry, typically consisting of scraps of shortcrust pastry, sugared, sprinkled with currants and rolled into thick flat cakes before baking. [5] Fat rascals, whatever their composition, do not appear to have been widely known outside the Yorkshire region until the 1980s, although there are occasional mentions in other regions, such as in Rye, Sussex in Ford Madox Ford's 1931 memoirs. [6]
There is a recipe for fat rascals in a book called "The Presidents' Cook Book" by Poppy Cannon and Patricia Brooks published in 1968 by Funk and Wagnalls in the USA. They say "In Edith Roosevelt's most cherished cook book .... is this recipe for hot biscuits." This cook book now rests on a shelf in the parlour of Sagamore Hill. [7]
A widely recognised version of the fat rascal was introduced by Bettys Café Tea Rooms in North Yorkshire in 1983. This is a plump, fruity scone with a 'face' made from cherries and almonds based on a rock cake recipe, developed by Helen Frankel, then a buyer and marketing assistant at Bettys. Following its launch, the fat rascal quickly became Bettys' best known and best-selling bakery product, selling over 375,000 per year. [8] Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate own the registered trade mark for the name 'fat rascal'. [9]
A cookie is a baked or cooked snack or dessert that is typically small, flat and sweet. It usually contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of oil, fat, or butter. It may include other ingredients such as raisins, oats, chocolate chips, nuts, etc.
Dessert is a course that concludes a meal. The course consists of sweet foods, such as confections, and possibly a beverage such as dessert wine and liqueur. In some parts of the world, such as much of Central Africa and West Africa, and most parts of China, there is no tradition of a dessert course to conclude a meal.
Shortcrust pastry is a type of pastry often used for the base of a tart, quiche, pie, or flan. Shortcrust pastry can be used to make both sweet and savory pies such as apple pie, quiche, lemon meringue or chicken pie.
Pastry is baked food made with a dough of flour, water and shortening that may be savoury or sweetened. Sweetened pastries are often described as bakers' confectionery. The word "pastries" suggests many kinds of baked products made from ingredients such as flour, sugar, milk, butter, shortening, baking powder, and eggs. Small tarts and other sweet baked products are called pastries. Common pastry dishes include pies, tarts, quiches, croissants, and pasties.
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit, nuts, brown sugar, sweetened vegetables, or with thicker fillings based on eggs and dairy. Savoury pies may be filled with meat, eggs and cheese (quiche) or a mixture of meat and vegetables.
Hungarian or Magyar cuisine is the cuisine characteristic of the nation of Hungary and its primary ethnic group, the Magyars. Traditional Hungarian dishes are primarily based on meats, seasonal vegetables, fruits, bread, and dairy products.
A scone is a baked good, usually made of either wheat or oatmeal with baking powder as a leavening agent, and baked on sheet pans. A scone is often slightly sweetened and occasionally glazed with egg wash. The scone is a basic component of the cream tea. It differs from teacakes and other types of sweets that are made with yeast. Scones were chosen as the Republic of Ireland representative for Café Europe during the Austrian Presidency of the European Union in 2006, while the United Kingdom chose shortbread.
A muffin is an individually portioned baked product, however the term can refer to one of two distinct items: a part-raised flatbread that is baked and then cooked on a griddle, or an quickbread that is chemically leavened and then baked in a mold. While quickbread "American" muffins are often sweetened, there are savory varieties made with ingredients such as corn and cheese, and less sweet varieties like traditional bran muffins. The flatbread "English" variety is of British or other European derivation, and dates from at least the early 18th century, while the quickbread originated in North America during the 19th century. Both types are common worldwide today.
Shortcake generally refers to a sweet cake or crumbly biscuit in the American sense. Shortcakes, particularly layered with strawberries and whipped cream, are now found world-wide, but generally considered to be North American in origin. Variations between sweet biscuits and something more like a sponge cake may reflect regional preferences. Japanese strawberry cake tends to use a sponge cake base, and is a popular holiday treat in Japan.
Cobbler is a dessert consisting of a fruit filling poured into a large baking dish and covered with a batter, biscuit, or dumpling before being baked. Some cobbler recipes, especially in the American South, resemble a thick-crusted, deep-dish pie with both a top and bottom crust. Cobbler is part of the cuisine of the United Kingdom and United States, and should not be confused with a crumble.
Welsh cakes, also bakestones or pics, are a traditional sweet bread in Wales. They have been popular since the late 19th century with the addition of fat, sugar and dried fruit to a longer standing recipe for flat-bread baked on a griddle.
A teacake in England is generally a light yeast-based sweet bun containing dried fruit, typically served toasted and buttered. In the U.S. teacakes can be cookies or small cakes. In Sweden, they are soft, round, flat wheat breads made with milk and a little sugar, and used to make buttered ham or cheese sandwiches. In India and Australia, a teacake is more like a butter cake. Tea refers to the popular beverage to which these baked goods are an accompaniment.
Chorley cakes are flattened, fruit filled pastry cakes, traditionally associated with the town of Chorley in Lancashire, England.
Lardy cake, also known as lardy bread, lardy Johns, dough cake and fourses cake is a traditional rich spiced form of bread found in several southern counties of England, each claiming to provide the original recipe. It remains a popular weekend tea cake in the southern counties of England, including Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and Gloucestershire.
A rock cake, also called a rock bun, is a small cake with a rough surface resembling a rock. They were promoted by the Ministry of Food during the Second World War since they require fewer eggs and less sugar than ordinary cakes, an important savings in a time of strict rationing. Traditional recipes bulked them with oatmeal, which was more readily available than white flour.
Sponge cake is a light cake made with egg whites, flour and sugar, sometimes leavened with baking powder. Sponge cakes, leavened with beaten eggs, originated during the Renaissance, possibly in Spain. The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first of the non-yeasted cakes, and the earliest attested sponge cake recipe in English is found in a book by the English poet Gervase Markham, The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman (1615). Still, the cake was much more like a cracker: thin and crispy. Sponge cakes became the cake recognized today when bakers started using beaten eggs as a rising agent in the mid-18th century. The Victorian creation of baking powder by English food manufacturer Alfred Bird in 1843 allowed the addition of butter to the traditional sponge recipe, resulting in the creation of the Victoria sponge.
A singing hinny or singin' hinny is a type of bannock, griddle cake or scone, made in the north of England, especially Northumberland and the coal-mining areas of the North East. In Scotland, they are known as fatty cutties.
The origin of the name is obscure, it is known in this context at least since the 1855 Glossary of Yorkshire Words and Phrases Collected in Whitby and the Neighbourhood of 1855 where the definition of 'Spice Cake' is given as; "tea cakes with currants as well as cakes more generally, known as plum cakes for which this quarter is famous. The tea cakes made rich with butter and cream are called fat rascals."
...we used to have cakes something of the same kind at home, when I was a girl, but they called them singing hinnies. They are famous at Saltburn for their fat rascals.
