LOCAL FOODS
Shaped like a scallop, inspired by pilgrims: come to the wild west of Anglesey and taste Welsh wizardry at its best.
DISCOVER Aberffraw biscuits & Cornish pasties
THE ABERFFRAW BISCUIT (or cake) goes by a number of names, but whatever you call it, with a tradition dating back to the 13th century, it’s often held up as the oldest recognised biscuit in Britain.
A basic shortbread, moulded into the shape of a scallop shell, the Aberffraw might not be the best known of all biscuits these days, but boy does it have serious heritage.
In Welsh it’s the teisen Berffro - teisen meaning cake and Berffro being a colloquial rendering of Aberffraw, the coastal village on Anglesey from which they are said to hail.
The story goes that the wife of a 13thcentury Welsh king who kept court at Aberffraw was walking on the beach while her husband was busy doing kingly stuff in the town. Spying a scallop shell, she took it back to her lodgings and asked if a cake could be made in the same shape. One was duly baked, turning out as a hard shortbread (they didn’t have the cake/biscuit debate back then apparently), and a legend was born. The more plausible
