Frangipane Fly-Away Cakes

These aren’t pure frangipane, being more of a sponge/almond hybrid, so perhaps they should be called frangi-fairies.

Whatever you want to call them, they are light and delicious and are just the sort of thing you could rustle up with whatever you have in your dry cupboard, plus a quick dash to the local shop if absolutely necessary. They’ve come about as we desperately try, in our pre-move purge, to use up whatever happens to be languishing in a crumpled bag, stuffed into the back of the larder shelf - most probably past its sell-by date.

Using sis-in law Jemima’s failsafe sponge-cake formula, you match the flour/almond mix, sugar and butter weight to that of the eggs. Two eggs seemed to make batter for 6 good-sized fairies. However, following our Shed outing, I love the idea of 12 bite-sized versions - pixies if you like - nestled into twists of baking paper.

 

You need:

116g caster sugar

116g butter

2 eggs – (116g)

Drop of almond or vanilla essence

116g (50/50 self-raising flour and ground almonds)

Jam or marmalade (optional)

 

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Grease a muffin tin or use paper cases – or smaller twists of baking paper on a baking sheet.

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one and incorporate, as well as the essence. Sift in the dry ingredients and fold in to combine.

Spoon the batter into the cases, adding a tiny blob of jam or marmalade to the middle of each, if you like.

Bake for 20-30 minutes depending on the size of the cake, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Serve warm from the oven if possible, with a fruit compote such as rhubarb.

Chelsea Snail Buns

We had grand plans for yesterday, but then the weather reverted to recent form, so we ensconced ourselves in the brilliantly local and cosy Parlour for breakfast (more about that soon), watched the mizzle draw across the window like a lace curtain and shortened our agenda. Better to be realistic, surely, when the elements are winning. I mean, how long can it last…?

The result of our brainstorming over coffee, Bircher muesli and unlimited toast with lemon curd: a spell of long-overdue exercise in the gym and a batch of home-baked Chelsea buns.

I probably should have consulted baking legends Paul Hollywood and Dan Lepard on the bun formula, but yesterday I thought I’d ask my Panasonic bread-maker manual. A great hulk of white plastic, there is nothing pretty about this gadget, which lurks on the counter – in fact it may be even too large to call it that – it is, rather, an appliance. When we bought it four years ago we were told that we’d never use it, that it’d be on Gumtree within a month or in the attic gathering dust until our grandchildren found it.

Always in the back of my mind lurks a desire to prove the naysayers wrong, so as a consequence, this weekend was a particularly pleasing one. We kicked off on Friday with homemade pizzas (made with wholemeal bread flour in the absence of white), especially thin and crispy, the crust bubbled in spots, slathered with a tomato and anchovy sauce and combos of our favourite things. Thank you, bread-maker, for your 45 minute bout of kneading and pummelling to elastic-y wondrousness (honestly, I wouldn’t want to be a lump of dough in that thing).

Flicking through the machine’s manual, largely ignored but for aforementioned pizza dough and our favourite loaf recipes, its pages stuck together in places, I lighted upon the Chelsea Bun formula. Slightly daunting, the prospect of having a whole batch of these in a tin in the kitchen when they are supposed to be a one-off treat a safe distance away at the baker’s. Clearly there would be a time limit on optimal consumption too… which amounts to a few hours after baking as it turns out (they’re becoming more and more bullet-like as today continues, sorry BSG, but they could be gone before you get home).

This soft enriched dough resembles a starter as it is airy – in short, it has a beautiful life of its own, so don’t beat it about too much as you roll it out. This will mean it’ll spread nicely in the tin. As well as the fruit and spice mix ‘spread’, I certainly recommend adding a little diced stem ginger. I am not sure that there won’t be marmalade and chocolate chips in there too, next time. Baffled as to why the dough Catherine wheels were meant to sit together in a sandwich tin with sides, I now understand. On my low baking tray, they were prone to unravelling, rather than keeping the goodies inside their coils as they baked and rose into one another. The results were no less delicious, but perhaps more ‘garden path’ than ‘garden party’ Viennoiserie.

Practice makes perfect, I suppose, but this first attempt has left a tantalising enough taste in our mouths to want to try again. Next up, hot-cross buns. Why on earth not? It’s nearly Easter, after all.

If you have a bread maker (which makes super light work of creating the perfect conditions for your dough) the formula is below, from the gospel according to Panasonic. If you don’t have a great placcy lump dominating your kitchen (besides the fridge, of course), try Paul Hollywood’s recipe out for size.

Chelsea Buns

Dough

½ tsp yeast
250g strong white flour
1 tsp sugar
25g butter
tbsp milk powder
½ tsp salt
1 medium egg
100 ml water

Topping

15g butter
100g mixed dried fruit, stem ginger, chocolate chips, etc
50g soft brown sugar
1 tsp mixed spice

Once the dough is ready (you want to use the dough setting, whatever yours is), knead it lightly and roll it out to an oblong 26 x 20 cm.

Melt the butter and brush it over the dough. Mix the topping ingredients together and scatter evenly over the top, pressing the fruit in a bit. Roll it up from the long edge and cut into 8-10 slices.

Arrange these in a greased sandwich tin so they fit neatly and prove in the oven at 40C until doubled in size (approx. 20 mins).

Bake in a preheated oven at 220C for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Cool on a rack and drizzle with glace icing.

 

 

Frangipane-topped mince pies

I love mince pies and so, it transpired this week , does my one-year old nephew George. I am not surprised; this child was born to be a gourmand. He sports round, rosy cheeks and enjoys a polo-neck most days, pootling around somewhat unsteadily on his feet; channelling the Eighties food-critic vibe perfectly.

Although we share the mince-pie love, Master G and I approach them in different ways; I like mine warm (if the mincemeat even makes it out of the jar uneaten) whereas he enjoys rubbing the pie between his hands to extract the currants before plucking them out daintily (an amuse-bouche, if you will) and poking the lot in the general direction of his mouth. Either way, we all agree that a baby that smells of mincemeat at Christmas will be happily passed around from person to person. Better than smelling of something else.

George’s first mince pie was of the very highest calibre – made by the BSG’s mum just that morning and an hour off the cooling rack. As he crammed it in I asked his parents, casually, if he had a nut allergy. Thankfully not. The addition of a surprise almond either on top or inside each pie is magic, and the frangipane such a good foil to the rest of the pie that I am not sure there’s any going back for me; they are quite simply my favourite version yet. Ma BSG’s is a closely guarded secret recipe but I managed to cobble one together for you. Try them on Christmas Eve perhaps, with the radio up loud, just before you all settle down for The Snowman…

Happy Christmas all!  

Frangipane pimped-up pies

The quantities below really depend on how you like your pies. I like mine with a crisp thin base, to contrast with their soft top. You can do them thicker, add more brandy/frangipane..whatever.

1 pack (750g) ready-rolled puff pastry
Large jar of good mincemeat
100g unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
100g ground almonds
20g plain flour
1 large egg
2 tbsp brandy
Handful of chopped dried cranberries
Zest of half an orange
Whole blanched almonds

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Grease two 12-hole tart tins (or if you happen to have a tin with smaller holes you can make – and eat - many more).
Roll out the pastry sheet very thinly and cut 24 rounds of pastry to line the tins with. Leave the pastry bases to rest in the tins in the fridge while you make the frangipane.
Beat the butter until soft. Beat in the sugar until pale and fluffy and then beat in the egg. Mix in the flour and ground almonds.
Mix the brandy, chopped cranberries and orange zest with the mincemeat in a bowl. Half fill the pastry cases with mincemeat and then spoon a heaped teaspoon of frangipane over the top over each one. Smooth it over and press in an almond.
Bake for about 20 – 25 mins until golden brown.

Try not to eat the lot before they cool down. And leave a couple for Father Christmas….

Leckerli/läckerli. Luckily.

I sat damp November out, ignoring the premature strains of The Pogues and tried not to get too overexcited by the red cups at Starbucks as I waited for December and its promise of legitimate Advent thrills. I am now daydreaming of sprouts, bread sauce and mince pies, happy in the tangerine promise of Christmas to come.

A timely foodstuff has floated into my day-dreamy place: a Swiss biscuit called Leckerli. These little Christmas helpers are sure to see me through Advent. A friend recently proffered these in the office, in a crisp white paper bag all the way from Basel, Switzerland, where they are a speciality.

Immediately hooked, I scoured the Internet and have located a recipe from Stephen Jackson, correspondent at the Huddersfield Examiner. Writing about these spicy treats, he strikes just the right note, having been familiar with them from childhood. I wish I had been too – I will be making up for those lost Christmases.

Here is the link to his recipe. The mixture came out a bit dry so I used the clods that looked mixed and pressed them into a tin… though I did use the wrong sugar so perhaps that was the problem. Not entirely sure what to do with the almonds, I added them in with the flour, but again, perhaps there’s a bit too much dry stuff here to make it work. I didn’t have Kirsch so I used brandy in the mix, which was pretty good too and I left off the glaze for fear of losing all my teeth.

There was doubt as the sawdust-like dough went into the oven but when the biscuit emerged it was (and still is)  dense and chewy, and tastes of Christmas, if rather ugly (as if Father Christmas sat on a packet of mince pies). If you want neat squares, cut the slab while it’s still warm or face a losing battle; you could build houses with this stuff. Or just break it up.

I will try this recipe again, and perhaps another one translated from the many US versions around,  just to make sure I’m on the right snowy track… See this as phase 1.

Parkin practice: add patience.

 
Over time, the BSG and I have been doing our bit, greedily covering most bases in terms of foodstuffs. Obviously there are exotic ingredients from far-flung places missing from the repertoire…all in good time. I tend to take on the shellfish, whereas he is bolder with all things offal. We adore most things we encounter.

Somehow..somehow… parkin has hitherto eluded us both.

However, in this special report I am pleased to annouce that the dark days are over. We are now blissfully living in the age of A.P (After Parkin). A freshly-baked, auburn slab of it sits happily cooling its boots in the kitchen. As aromatic as gingerbread and more complex and grown-up (nutmeg, treacle, dark brown sugar and oatmeal in it) parkin apparently improves with age. In fact the true parkin pros up North frown on its being eaten before its 3 days old. I can’t believe it gets better than it is now, warm from the oven.

Fact is, I am really, really pleased with it. Perhaps this has something to do with having exactly the right ingredients (SO much butter) or me following the recipe to the letter, but it is perfect. I even managed to keep our temperamental oven from burning it to a crisp. The only thing I'd change next time is to not use a loose-bottomed cake tin - the mixture is nervously runny before it starts to cook and will willingly burn in charred drops on the oven floor. You don't want people to smell burning over the other amazing aromas – it makes you look bad and besides, the gingery cooking cloud is too wonderful to forgo. If there was a smell for a hug, then this is it.

It will keep for up to 2 weeks in an airtight container, I’m told. Not sure this baby’s going to make 3 days A.P. I’ll have to make some more…

Parkin

• 8 oz/220g soft butter
• 4 oz/110g soft, dark brown sugar
• 2oz / 55g black treacle/molasses
• 7oz / 200g golden syrup/ corn syrup
• 5oz/ 120g medium oatmeal
• 7 oz/ 200g self raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 4 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 2 tbsp milk

Heat the oven to 275°/140°C/gas 1

• Grease an 8" x 8"/ 20cm x 20cm square cake tin.
• In a large heavy-based saucepan melt together the butter, sugar, treacle, golden syrup over a gentle heat. Do not allow the mixture to boil, you simply need to melt these together.
• In a large, spacious, baking bowl stir together all the dry ingredients. Gradually add the melted butter mixture stirring to coat all the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.
• Gradually, beat in the eggs a few tablespoons at a time. Finally add the milk and again stir well.
• Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and cook for 1 ½ hours until firm and set and a dark golden brown.
• Remove the parkin from the oven and leave to cool in the tin. Once cool store the parkin in an airtight tin for a minimum of 3 days if you can resist eaten it, you can even leave it up to a week before eating and the flavours really develop and the mixture softens even further and become moist and sticky. The parkin will keep up to two weeks in an airtight container.

April firsts

I am not such a very nice person as it turns out. I mean, what on earth has Rachel Allen ever done to me? Nothing, apart from smile gently down the telly. And yet for some reason, I find all her jingly, lilting sunniness irritating to the point of wanting to leap in and start a food fight there in her spotless, Ballymaloe telly-kitchen.

However, this longstanding grudge dissipated when last weekend I sampled some of her food. Well, not her food exactly, but recipes from her book, beautifully executed by my friend Sarah, who does everything absolutely precisely: she is a scientist to her very core. (We used to have art v. science arguments at school, like the dog v. cat ones I have with the BSG these days - he is pro-cat if you’re interested in taking sides).

A couple of days with Sarah and her family in the rolling countryside outside Leeds had three of us Londoners wondering why we hadn’t jacked in the big smoke for this idyllic, wholesome life. In the first few warm rays of the year we had lunch outside: a delicious, shredded salad of savoy cabbage, carrots, crisp apples, bacon bits and chicken. And it was Rachel Allen – well Sarah, really – who made us feel these first breaths of summer. I think there may have even been some rougeing of the face, but that was my fault entirely.

Feeling rather virtuous after this refreshing main course (I would say light, except we ate all of it, including Sarah’s husband’s portion…He’d been on a run and thoroughly deserved to eat), Sarah produced the most beautiful lemon tart. Honestly, it looked like the best homemade thing I’d ever seen – shop-bought ones with their unbroken perfection don’t quite cut it. And it tasted like a cloud of citrussy sunshine, and had some kind of bruléed crust on its top. Heaven. As it turned out, that was Rachel too. So, not just a pretty husband, then. I even got a picture of lunch, for once, before it disappeared.

It was surprise we’d managed to fit any lunch in at all, when a mere hour beforehand we’d paid a visit to the Ilkley branch of Betty’s Tea Room. For a first-timer like me, simply ordering a coffee (albeit a rich, Latte Latino made with chocolate sauce and cinnamon) just wouldn’t have cut the mustard, so with it came the plumpest Yorkshire Fat Rascal (an enormous warm fruit bun), some freshly baked rarebit scones and Betty’s famous cinnamon toast. Clearly a recipe they’d perfected over time, the cinnamon and sugar lay in a thick crust over crunchy fingers of brown toast – the sort of mean brown toast you’d never have associated with such a treat but which was now transformed under its crystalline cloak. No wonder Sarah’s son, Finlay, eschewed his rather yummy-looking lunch in its favour.

The rest of the weekend continued much along the same theme – three girls from London, being fed like kings, with pancetta wrapped monkfish, white chocolate mousse, pork and apple crumble (my first savoury crumble – won’t be my last that’s for sure) and on Sunday morning, blueberry pancakes like the fluffiest cumulonimbus made by Rhys, Sarah’s hubby; a good excuse to march up onto the moor for a brisk one.

It was very hard to leave, even harder to manage the wagyu burger the BSG had prepared on my return and nigh on impossible to fathom what we’ll conjure up for them on the return leg; I might ask my new favourite person...

Honey and Lavender Cake

It’s August and the air is full. Of dancing spores and dandelion clocks, of lavender scents brushed from the flowers by bees too busy to stay with their fleeting wanton caresses. The sweet tang of muck spread on nearby fields occasionally reigns. Big Norfolk skies swirl overhead, punctuated by weather-fronts and their breezy boundaries, gigantic sheep-like clouds an endless parade of shapes; summer is busying about with a threat of packing up and shipping out. Like the dog helplessly watching its beloved owner pack for a holiday, I am hoping that there’s been some mistake. Surely it’s not leaving so soon, whatever the Met Office says.

Severe weather warnings aside, there are signs of autumn’s impending bounty: bright ornaments sprinkled amongst the foliage in trees and hedges, the flowers fading, making way for the berries. We are just a couple of weeks away from frenzied pilfering sessions – of plums, apples, blackberries and early sloes. But right now, patience must be deployed. Until the hedgerow harvest, why not take inspiration from the bees? The lavender’s in abundance – it seems a shame not to use it. It’s great studded into lamb, rosemary-style.

  

I attempted lavender cake once (bastardized from some sponge recipe or other) and it was amazing, even if I do say so myself. It was one of those rare times when improvisation paid off. God knows how. However, I am not a fool – I know this happens only once if you’re lucky, so I nicked a failsafe formula off someone who probably knows a lot better. Inconveniently, it’s written in American, which if you don’t understand you can decipher courtesy of Delia’s conversion table; as everyone knows, you can’t go wrong with Delia.

To decorate, you can really go all Laura Ashley on it. I promise you it won’t taste like pot pourri. if you still don’t believe me, you can just infuse a pot of sugar with a stalk for a few days beforehand, discard it and use the sugar, rather than grinding the flowers themselves.

Serves 6–8

2 stalks lavender flowers (or 2 tbsp  lavender flowers)

½ cup caster sugar

250g unsalted butter, at room temperature

¼ cup honey

3 eggs

1½ cups self-raising flour

¾ cup buttermilk

2 tbsp sifted icing sugar, to serve

lavender flowers (extra), to decorate

thick cream, to serve

1 Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line a 22cm spring-form cake tin with greaseproof paper. Grind lavender flowers and sugar together with a mortar and pestle until finely ground.

2 Using an electric beater, beat lavender sugar, butter and honey until light and creamy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift flour into mixture. Using a large metal spoon, gently fold flour and buttermilk into mixture. Spoon into prepared baking pan. Smooth top. Bake for 1 hour or until cooked when tested with a skewer.

3 Stand for 5 minutes before releasing clamp and inverting cake onto a wire rack. Dust with icing sugar and sprinkle with flowers (extra) if you wish. Serve with thick cream.

Note: it’s important to use lavender that is home-grown and pest free, not commercially grown lavender that may have been sprayed with chemicals. 

I am challenging the best baker I know, Jemima, to make this (she also happens to be my sister-in-law but these facts are unrelated). Just because. Because of those ethereal Honey Buns (courtesy of Valentine Warner) she treated the BSG and me to the other week, drenched in an orange-y nectar. That was indeed a feast that warrants its own post…

The long pepper and shortbread of it

The other week we found ourselves in a garden so rambling and beautiful that even the next-door neighbour’s roses wanted in. With heavy heads they craned over the dividing wall, chaotic with their strong, sweet scents, dropping petals in their eagerness to spot the wild strawberries running rampage over the flagstones. Looking over the other way, I was mystified as to their covetousness, for not one in this little ladder of blossoming walled gardens would have looked out of place at the Chelsea Flower Show. Our friend Libby, the proud co-owner of this enchanted glade, told us that the neighbour’s rabbit would often be sighted munching its merry way through any of them (I don’t blame him, what a feast - but beware the foxes!) The warm, crepuscular air was loaded with heavy fragrance and the promise of thunder, so we settled on drinks al fresco and supper surveying the foliage from the safety of the kitchen, suspended over the garden in our glassy Juliet balcony. I’m pretty sure we were in a food stylist’s dream.

This hunch was reinforced when we were confronted with an Ottolenghi-inspired spread, of chargrilled ribbons of courgette; scorched blackened peppers; couscous jewelled with cranberries and herbs; a fresh, cooling yoghurt dip and barbequed butterflied leg of lamb, smothered in chermoula. From this blousy garden in N1 my palate chartered a magic carpet to the souks of Northern Africa. And it didn’t stop there.

Libby bestowed upon us the secret of the Spicery, a genius enterprise that sends monthly parcels of spice blends and associated recipes for a subscription. An ace present for any foodie I reckon. This was the inspiration behind the long pepper and bourbon vanilla shortbread that accompanied our berries and whipped elderflower cream. The biscuits were light and buttery giving way to prickles of sweet long pepper heat; afterwards not a crumb remained.

Inspired by Libby’s exciting addition to this teatime favourite, I have decided to experiment over the next few weeks, boring whoever’s coming round with shortbread chapter and verse. Rosewater, spices, lavender, tea - I’ll try them all in the mix. But I might cheat on the blending part with our new food processor. Three days and counting….

*like pepper but hotter, native to Indonesia

 

Shortbread (makes 20-24 fingers)

125g/4oz butter

55g/2oz caster sugar

180g/6oz plain flour

Heat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5.

Beat the butter and the sugar together until pale and creamy.

Stir in the flour to get a smooth mixture. Add spices, scents, zests – whatever takes your fancy. Turn on to a work surface and gently roll out to 1cm thick.

Cut into rounds or fingers, place onto a baking tray and chill in the fridge for 20 minutes. Avoid using your hands too much at this stage as they will melt the butter and make the mixture greasier.

Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. Set aside to cool on a wire rack.

Sprinkle with caster sugar and serve. Would go very well with homemade elderflower ice-cream.

Me old china

A common dilemma: you’re hungry, it’s miserable weather, you want to come home and do yourself a lovely cottage pie, but there’s only one or two of you, and a dish so big it’d do for sixteen…Oh well, do it the next time you have friends round for supper…

Not any more.

An innovative solution, boys and girls, has presented itself, courtesy of the brilliant Mr JC: I give you the Cottage Jacket, or Cottato if you’re into haute cuisine. We stumbled upon this whilst thumbing through a copy of an excellent charity cookbook compiled by a friend, and of course, the BSG had to go straight out and stock up with the ingredients.

Yes, it’s what you’d expect it to be - a cottage pie (or any other pie for that matter) inside a scooped-out baked potato, with the fluffy innards mashed and laid on top, then baked for a little longer. It’ll run and run, this one - just think of all those combinations, and afterwards none of that really crusty, hard-to-shift washing up that the smiley Ainsley Harriott is so fond of. Amazing.

Do you remember that very important time of day when you were a child, somewhere between grazing a knee, plasters, applications of Germolene, and bathtime? Tea (often high tea in our house, which usually meant something involving baked beans) was part of the daily ritual when we were young, and it’s back. In fact, it’s the new black, and altogether a bit of a vamp.

They say it is the cocktail of choice in 2010, imbibed by the most fashionable and forward-thinking Londoners (By ‘they,’ I mean I and by ‘most fashionable Londoners,’ I mean our friends). Tired of hosting pub drinks for a birthday? Well then, Happy Hour has just got a bit earlier. Why not try the Vintage Patisserie and hold a tea party? That’s what our friend Mr C did, for Mrs C’s 30^th.

On a very wet Saturday afternoon, having hopped over possibly the biggest puddle London could conjure, we were led into a cosy parlour at 93 Feet East on Brick Lane, straight into the 1920s where we were met by Angel and her team and there, laid over three tables, was a teascape that’d make Bertie Wooster wince with envy and fire Jeeves for not cutting the mustard. Cakes, rockscones, a tiny white chocolate cube on each beflowered saucer bearing the birthday girl’s name; delicate mismatched china teacups, filled with a beguiling cocktail of jasmine green tea and sparkling wine, sprinkled with mixed berries. I’ll admit I lost track after the fourth cup, but it must’ve been packed with antioxidants….Of course, there was the real thing too.

If it didn’t already feel like a game of Let’s Pretend, the presence of a dressing-up box definitely brought out our roaring twenties personas. For some reason, the BSG was rather taken with a string of pearls, which he wore as well as braces and a top hat for the duration.

Crustless white sandwiches made with the softest of breads came round on dainty silver stands – I’m not sure I’ve ever had an egg sandwich that good. Others were filled with delicate slivers of smoked salmon and crisp cucumber. There were plates of chocolate-dipped strawberries and bowls of dark, decadent cherries to remind us that summer had even existed and to promise it would return. In the lucky dip of shot-sized puddings, I got the tiramisu: the BSG’s favourite. This was definitely grown-up tea, with a twist of naughtiness in it.

The sodden afternoon was forgotten in the convivial glow, the elusive January light fading into the blue evening. I half expected Gatsby to saunter in. What a lovely way to while away the hours!

If you are cold, tea will warm you.  If you are too heated, it will cool you. 

If you are depressed, it will cheer you.  If you are excited, it will calm you.

(William Gladstone)

Tea existed properly once – and was not confined to consumption with children or grandparents. We should be making more tea dates, and I don’t mean tourist-style in hotels where you pay the earth. I say, in the spirit of Gladstone, we bring back tea in all its glory, what what? Moreover, I know just the people to spearhead the campaign….

Egg in a cup.

(for Dave who is running around like a headless chicken setting up his show)

I am sure that every family has a hybridised recipe using these exact same ingredients, but this is ours, and it comes from my Granny Scraggs*. She and my mum have made it a signature dish in our family, ensuring that it will run through generations to come.

When we were small, this was what we ate for tea most often, when the four of us had been out playing too late or were overtired and not up for much else. Nevertheless, it always elicited squeals of excitement, usually preceded by a race down to Gran’s henhouse to collect the star ingredients.

Did everyone have those enormous china tea cups at the back of the kitchen cupboard, that no-one ever seemed to drink tea out of? Well, as far as we were concerned, they had this one extremely important purpose. Even now, using a substitute, a bowl, feels like cheating…

I have altered the volumes, for grown-ups (and I suppose the more responsible adults might want to use brown bread, which works too). It all depends on your appetite.

For a very quick and easy supper, you need

2 eggs
2 slices of soft white bread
Lightly salted butter, out of the fridge for a bit
Salt and pepper

Put the eggs in a pan of boiling water and cook for four and a half minutes or so. Meanwhile, butter your bread - if it tears, then all the better - fold in half and rip apart into chunks, about bite-sized. Place the bread in a wide cup (a bowl is more practical I suppose, but far less fun), then once the eggs are ready, take their lids off and scoop out the soft-boiled egg with a teaspoon, into the cup. Mash up all together with a fork, adding salt and pepper to taste.

You get lots of different bites in this cup, some yolky, some buttery. I would have thought that you could add Marmite, Tabasco, bits of cooked bacon, to your liking, but it is wonderful as it is – an enormous hug – in a cup.



* so-named after the place she lives rather than her lovely Christian name (I am responsible), and who makes the best fish pie in the world.

‘s Gone

Hmmm. They’ve put the Christmas lights up on Oxford Street. I know it’s because retailers want to get cracking with their festive trade and good luck to them, but the arrival of these lights heralds the willing away of such a great season, and the start of the ‘Christmas Rush’. Do we have to rush it? It seems that as soon as summer is behind us, it must be time to count down to Christmas, which is faintly ridiculous as surely the autumn gives us more satisfactorily seasonal weather than both.

So, in retort, here is a metaphorical kick in the baubles (not in a Scrooge-like manner, you understand - I love Christmas): a recipe for the scones the BSG and I made on a whim last Sunday. I in no way associate them with December, but rather the summer and the autumn, when jams really come into their own, and a time of day that we are often too busy rushing around to consider.

Makes 6 scones

225g self raising flour

½ teaspoon salt

55g butter

¼ pint milk

1 beaten egg or some milk (to brush on as a glaze)

Preheat the oven to 220°C and flour a baking sheet.

Sift the flour and salt into a mixing bowl, and then using the tips of your fingers, very lightly but swiftly rub in the butter until the mixture is like breadcrumbs. Make a crater in this, and pour in the milk, mixing to soft dough, this time with a knife.

Shape the dough out onto the baking sheet, so that it is smooth, then either roll or press to about an inch thick and cut into round using a cutter or, even easier to hand, an upturned glass from the cupboard, and lay them our on the baking sheet.

Glaze depending on how you like your scone – egg for golden glossy crust, or milk for a lighter, softer one.

Bake in the top of the oven for about 7 minutes, until they have gone golden and risen.

You can leave them to cool but good luck with the wait: they are irresistible warm.

Ps: According to the BSG, the most important part is the lightness in the fingertips, you then get a satisfactory golden cloud of crumbly scone on which you can slather your favourite jam (and perhaps some cream…)