Tag Archives: cheese scones

Trust your mother

14 Sep

You should always trust your mother; she knows best.

I know this to be true. It’s always been thus.

So why did I ignore her advice a couple of weeks ago?

We had gone home for a day at the end of August – it was a couple of days after my birthday, and I always want to see my parents around then. As a bonus it was the Gatehouse Flower Show. We used to enter flowers, and plants, and vegetables, and preserves and homebaking, and in the old kitchen at 29 Fleet Street we had a large display of winners tickets pinned to the wooden beam, proof of our successes. I haven’t even attended the Flower Show for too many years, most recently because working at Edinburgh summer Festivals meant I didn’t have the time off, and before that I was living in London and had too much of a London-head on me to make the effort. Shame on me!

And this year although we were attending, we didn’t enter anything. As Mum says, “That means we can confidently go around and say, Oh I could have won a prize in that category, without the contrary evidence of the judges’ decisions”.

I’m confident I would have won a prize in the wholemeal bread category (there were only 2 entries) and also the cheese scone category (my scones are exceptionally good). But I’m not allowed to enter all the categories – only people living locally are allowed to enter most categories, except for some random things like lemon curd (which I’m quite good at) and three hen’s eggs.  Or it might be three hens’ eggs, who knows? And I suspect the judges would never know either.

Anyway, while I was home I was telling Mum about the great apple harvest we were looking forward to this year. Mum bought me two apple trees three years ago: a Galloway Pippin and a Cambusnethan Pippin. The first year they didn’t really fruit, of course. Last year we had a couple off each tree. And this year we have an enormous harvest – the poor wee trees are quite laden down with the weight of the crop.

And here comes the advice bit.

Mum recommended I pick some of the fruit off the heaviest branches straight away, or the branches may break with the weight of fruit.

I didn’t.

The next day a wind whipped up, after weeks of relatively balmy and calm weather. The inevitable happened and the wind ripped a branch from the tree. A branch with over 30 apples on it.

We now have many jars of apple chutney, and there will be cinnamon apple jelly by the end of the weekend. They are also deliciously good with a chunk of mature cheddar.

Recipes and pictures will follow.

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Perfect and easy cheese scones

2 Dec

You know how it is, you’ve got some nubs of cheese left in the fridge and you think they’d be better cooked than eaten on a cracker.

But you want your cheesy snack NOW.

Mimolette cheese scones

Mimolette cheese scones

Well, this is the recipe for you – from start to finish it probably only takes about half an hour.

Ready?

Off we go.

Spicy cheese scones

Preheat oven to 200C / GM6. Prepare a baking sheet

  • 200g SR flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp sugar
  • a good shake of celery salt
  • a good shake of cayenne pepper
  • a good shake of smoked paprika
  • about 40g unsalted butter, straight from the fridge, grated on a coarse grater
  • 100g mature cheddar-type cheese (I used mimolette) either grated or cut into wee chunks
  • 3tsp crunchy mustard
  • 100ml milk
  1. Sift all dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl
  2. Stir in the butter and cheese
  3. Add milk and mustard and mix together with a fork
  4. Bring together with your hands and knead REALLY lightly on a floured board. If the dough is really solid, add more milk – it should come together, but feel quite light and spongey (not hard and solid)
  5. Pat down to about 2cm thickness
  6. Either use a cutter to make about 8-9 scones, or cut into rough scone shapes with a knife
  7. Bake for 12-15mins until golden brown

Grating the butter means you don’t need to do anything other than mix it in to the dry mixture – no working it till it turns into breadcrumbs. To be honest I didn’t weigh the butter, I just grated about 1/6 packet of butter (mark the pack of butter half way down, then divide the half into 3 .. don’t actually cut through it, just mark with a knife then grate to this point).

You could make these into wee baby scones and they’d be delish with a wee sherry at Christmas. Or Bonfire Night

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