These tasty pastry delights have been on our minds of late. It’s a cake from a small Lancashire town on the outskirts of Manchester.

What Are Chorley Cakes?

They’re like biscuits—a rather delicious flattened, fruit-filled pastry thing. Sometimes they go by the name of Eccles cakes.

Being small and moreish, it’s easy to consume more than one at the same time. That’s our theory for why it’s “Chorley cakes” rather than “Chorley cake”.

Whatever, they’re a common staple around Lancashire, Manchester, and wherever else “oop norf” you dare to mention.

Chorley/Eccles cakes are available in many stores across the North West of England. They’re available in the likes of the above packaging.

As with fish & chips and mushy peas, these things are ubiquitous with life here.

If you’re not from this part of the world… tough! You’ll have to go without them.

Or you can just bake the bloody things and have done with it. Whilst you’re at it, go and get some Marmite to flush them down with.

How To Bake Chorley Cakes

As you can see from that video, they’re also easy to make. So even if you’re from Egypt, why not go ahead and bake some up?

Pastry Ingredients

300g (10oz) plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
25g (1oz) caster sugar
180g (6oz) butter
80ml (3fl oz) milk or milk alternative

Filling Ingredients

200g (7oz) currants
50g soft light brown sugar
50g butter—melt the stuff!
1 egg white, whipped up and beaten

For preparation tips, look at the above video. Or just search around online.

What? What do you expect? This isn’t a cooking blog, FFS, we just write about stupid stuff and culture. Don’t be lazy!

Notes on Chorley

Chorley is a funny little place. At once full of very nice and down to Earth folk, there’s also a major chav presence with hoodlums running riot.

That’s particularly notable in Adlington, which is down the road from Chorley. A little village, driving through it you’d be amazed at its aesthetic delights.

Yet a lot of the folks who live there can be quite weirdly belligerent and combative. It’s the Northern way, we guess.

English comedian Peter Kay (from Bolton) plays loving homage to Chorley in much of his work. Particularly in Phoenix Nights.

It’s a rather quaint place, we guess. Quiet. Inoffensive. And there’s a market, library, one pub of interest, plus a bizarrely fancy Booths supermarket.

Well, it’s where we grew up! So it has a lot of value to us, even if we haven’t been there for ages. And, yes, you can purchase Chorley Cakes in Chorley.