7 Things I Learned From TikTok's Favorite Scottish Baker
The first thing you’ll notice about The Hebridean Baker, a.k.a Coinneach MacLeod, is his cooing Scottish accent and slow approach to baking. His style of food videos are much different than the fast-paced videos with quick voiceovers you tend to see on TikTok. He likes to tell us about his life in the Hebrides, an archipelago of thousands of islands in Northern Scotland, and his trusty dog Seòras.
The way MacLeod bakes through recipes like Scottish shortbread and carrot and cardamom loaf on the wood-burning stove would make any cottagecore devotee jealous. His new cookbook, The Hebridean Baker: Recipes and Wee Stories from the Scottish Islands, is full of rustic recipes developed in his country kitchen and stories from his life. I sat down with him for the most delightful 30-minute Zoom call, and here’s what I learned.
1. Pastries with stories behind them just taste better.
“It's a Scottish cookbook, so I knew I needed the best shortbread recipe I could find. I found one on Shetland called a bride's bonn. It's baked by the mother of the bride on the day of the wedding, and she will walk up to her door and smash the shortbread over [the bride’s] head. If you're a guest at the wedding, [you can] catch a piece of a shortbread and put it under your pillow. It's supposed to give you sweet dreams.”
2. If MacLeod can bake in a house with no running water or electricity, you can bake anything in your kitchen.
“There's no electricity or running water at [my country home], but we do have a big old-fashioned wood-burning stove that boils the water and heats the place. The only gauge is cold, hot, and very hot. And my goodness, every dozen cupcakes I take out of that oven are completely a different color.”
3. There’s a Scottish version of Hygge called Blàths.
“It's kind of a lifestyle approach to just slowing down a wee bit and enjoying what you have around you and not always aspiring to have more. There's a lovely saying in Gaelic: ‘Beiridh blàths air luaths.’ And it means there’s a time for everything. That's sort of my mantra over the last few years.”
4. Adding whisky (especially Scotch) to pastries is always a good idea.
“Whisky adds the most wonderful flavor to bakes. And the great thing for us in Scotland, of course, is depending on which type of whisky you use, that's going to give you a very different flavor to your cranachan [ed. Note: a dessert of cream, raspberries, whisky, and oats] for example, which is probably what are most famous dishes."
5. I need a spurtle for my porridge.
“There's only one way for us to stir our porridge and oats, and that is with an instrument called a spurtle. A spurtle is a spoon without a spoon at the bottom. It's just like this kind of porky stick thing that makes it much easier to bash out the lumps of butter when you're stirring it.”
6. The Scottish pastry called a duff, also known as a clootie dumpling, is a spiced cake.
“The way we eat a duff changes as the days go on. On day one, we just slice it warm with a nice cuppa—we have it like a cake. Day two, it's more like a pudding. We have it covered in custard as an evening dessert. Day three is the best day. We have it as part of a full Hebridean breakfast where we fry slices with bacon and sausages. It's a real versatile little cake that definitely stands out for me.”
7. This is the way to a Hebridean man or woman’s heart.
“If you're looking to meet the Hebridean man or woman of your dreams, the way to our hearts is to be able to make a duff. If you can do that, you'll be married the next day.
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