. There are caramel squares, butterfly buns and fairy cakes with extravagant whorls of buttercream. There are some Shetland specialities too. You expect scones, but there are also sweet bannocks, these ones baked in the oven rather than on a traditional girdle. A bannock is made from dough that's similar to scone dough, but it's shaped into a circle and quartered before cooking. To me they look like the soda farls made in Northern Ireland but it's hard to discuss such things as the names of baked goods, even within Scotland, vary widely. You might see 'hufsie' too, a dens){kind=link}
From spiced treacle bannocks to a mouthwatering lemon cake and iced finger buns
There’s a queue outside Bigton Community Hall and a sign on the door that reads ‘£3.50 per head, £2.00 for bairns’. This is the best-value meal in Shetland today, though the event is as much about ‘having a yarn’ as eating. Sunday teas are a big thing here, a much-loved way to get together in a community where your next-door neighbour might be several fields away.
The location and dates for the teas are published in The Shetland Times – a paper that nearly every resident of the islands in Scotland’s far, far north reads – and you can go to several in one afternoon, a kind of ‘cake crawl’. There’s good-natured competition between the different towns and villages – there are 50 community halls – though it would be a mistake to voice a preference for one over the others.
In the hall, the aluminium pots of tea are so huge their warmth is heating the room. Babies are passed between parents, so everyone can fill their plate and an army of volunteers slips between tables clearing cups and saucers.
A huge bank of tables, covered in white paper, runs the length of the room. The first section is always devoted to ‘savouries’ – sandwiches, quiches, pies and sausage rolls – but most people are here for the ‘fancies’. The ‘fancies’ comprise every cake and bun you’ve eaten since you were four years old, and some modern interlopers too (lemon drizzle cake wasn’t around 30 years ago but it’s everywhere these days). There are caramel squares, butterfly buns and fairy cakes with extravagant whorls of buttercream.