BBC NEWS | UK | Wales (2024)

Marks and Spencer customers in Wales were baffled when they went in search of the national cake to discover it had been relabelled a "currant drop scone".

Wales' former national chef said Welsh cakes and drop scones were different.

M&S said "drop scone" was more recognisable but said it had reverted to Welsh cake as customers were unable to find the product.

Ruth Hamm, from Swansea, had gone into M&S to buy some of her favourite Welsh cakes but could not find them.

"I asked the staff and they said they had been renamed - but they looked exactly the same," she said.

The company told her it had changed the name to currant drop scone because it was "more recognisable for international customers who shop at our franchise stores abroad".

Feedback from stores and our existing Welsh cake customers has been that they have found it difficult to find the product on our shelves M&S spokeswoman

Mrs Hamm contacted the BBC Wales consumer programme X-Ray, who contacted M&S over the change.

The company said in a statement: ""Previously this product was only available in Wales, Scotland and the south-west.

"We wanted to offer this delicious product to our customers throughout the UK, and have therefore used the more recognisable name of currant drop scone."

According to Doug Windsor, the former national chef of Wales, the two cakes are made in a different way.

He explained: "A Welsh cake is made from a dough, while a drop scone is made from a batter and is more of a pancake," he said.

"You cook both on a bakestone or in a frying pan, but while you can roll out and cut out a Welsh cake from the dough, you have to pour the batter from a drop scone into a skillet, then drop the currants - or more usually berries - into it.

"Renaming them is a really strange thing to do - when it comes to food you can't get much more Welsh than a Welsh cake."

M&S has now reverted to using the original name.

"Feedback from stores, and our existing Welsh cake customers, has been that they have found it difficult to find the product on our shelves," said a spokeswoman.

"Responding to our customers we are therefore changing the name back to Welsh cakes," she added.

X-Ray is on BBC One Wales at 1930 GMT on Monday and BBC 2W 2030 GMT Tuesday.