h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I seem to have wangled myself a Sunday off this week. The weather's appreciably cooler today than it has been lately (currently 81°F as opposed to 98°F this time 48 hours ago) so I thought I'd bake something. I was looking through my recipes and came across one for Shropshire mint cakes. If you fancy it yourself here's the recipe:

For the pastry:
200g plain flour
100g butter, diced
1 tbsp caster sugar
enough cold water to mix

For the filling:
2 tbsp chopped fresh mint
80g caster sugar
80g currants
50g softened butter
1 egg to glaze

Place the chopped mint into a bowl and add 40g of the caster sugar and mix well. Leave to sit for at least an hour until the mint juices start to run.

Make the pastry by placing the flour and the diced butter in a bowl and rubbing the butter into the flour using the tips of your fingers, lifting your hands up high over the bowl to incorporate air. When it looks like fine breadcrumbs, stir in the tablespoon of sugar and add enough water to make a smooth dough. Flatten the dough slightly into a disc and wrap in clingfilm and place in the fridge for thirty minutes.

Place the currants, mint mixture, remaining sugar and the butter into a bowl and using a fork combine well.

Roll the pastry quite thinly and cut out discs using a scone/cookie cutter. Place half of these discs onto two baking sheets. Then place teaspoonfuls of the currant mixture in the middle of the discs. I used a scone cutter that measures 6 cm and this made 24 little cakes.

Beat the egg with a fork and then brush a little of the egg all around the edge of the discs of pastry and place another disc on top, sealing well around the edge by pressing with your finger. Brush the egg all over the tops and then place the baking trays in a preheated oven at 200°C, 400°F, gas mark 6 or the middle/bottom of the roasting oven of the Aga for 10-12 minutes until golden brown. Remove carefully onto a wire rack and leave to cool a little before you sample your first one.


Well. Firstly, I don't have any fresh mint but I know you can substitute dried for fresh, I just didn't know the proportions so I looked it up online. It looks like one measure of dried is equal to about three of fresh, but then I realised I don't have any dried either

Oh, but look There's a conversion table here that gives substitute amounts for other mint ingredients that you can use instead of fresh, one of which is peppermint oil which I know I've got. Sorted! Thing is... I went by the mint extract amount (1/4 - 1/2 tsp per tbsp of fresh mint) instead of the peppermint oil amount - 1 drop per tbspn). Those are going to be seriously minty

This is also one of those 'Lies, damn lies, statistics and bloody recipes' recipes. She reckons she got 24 cakes out of that amount of pastry. In other words, 48 pastry rounds using that size cutter, which I also have, and used. Cobblers! I got 11 cakes (22 pastry rounds) out of it.

Oh well, I suppose I'd better try one. Here goes...

Well that wasn't so bad! Quite tasty as a matter of fact Just about the right amount of mint flavour I reckon, with a tiny bit of minty burn as it goes down. Next time though (and there will be a next time, oh yes) I'll try it with fresh mint (that first part sounds a lot like making a mint julep. I must get a muddler), and I might use puff pastry instead