One of my tasks this week is baking a contribution for the Christmas Party at work. My plan was bite sized lardy cakes and, in my practise, I found they worked okay with vegetable lard rather than the pork based version. I’ve got nothing against the porcine version (although I’m a bit suspicious of what checks and balances watch over the production process, back to the care of the animals) but we have such a diverse population of staff and students that I wanted to create something that wouldn’t exclude a relatively high proportion of the potential audience.

Unfortunately the block of vegetable cooking fat got used up making mince pies for another event at the weekend and, when I popped by the Co-op on the way home, they only had pork lard. Well, that and goose fat…

So, now my contribution is made with goose dripping for the larding and it works very well. Given the amount of sugar in the recipe I’m not sure I can detect much difference between any of the fats I have used but this batch has come out well. Just as well it was a large batch; I’ve still got a decent tinful to take in with me despite quite thorough testing (and plenty of goose fat for enhancing other Christmas recipes)!