Savoury – Littleworth Lane

I can imagine that these cheese scones would have been a favourite of Granny’s. They would have been simple to make from ingredients she would have kept in her larder and, although she was an accomplished cook and didn’t need a recipe to be easy, this one is certainly very simple and I am sure she would have been able to make them without even looking at a recipe.

There was quite a hefty amount of baking powder asked for in her original recipe (4 teaspoons) and I decided to cut this down to 3 and the scones seemed to rise well. You could of course use self-raising flour instead, which is made with a ratio of approximately 1 teaspoon of baking powder for every 4 oz of plain flour. Self-raising flour wasn’t available as widely as it is now, and plain flour was used more frequently with baking power as the raising agent. So although I fiddled with the ratio, I did still use plain flour and a raising agent.

The full recipe I ended up using was:

8 oz plain four, 3 teaspoons of baking powder, 4 oz of grated cheddar cheese, 2 oz margarine, 8 tablespoons of milk, and 1/4 teaspoon of mustard.

The method involves rubbing the margarine in to the flour and baking powder in a large bowl and then adding the milk, mustard and grated cheese. The dough is mixed until it is just combined and then lightly rolled or pressed in to a 1/2 inch think round. It gets a bit messy, but that’s definitely the fun of this recipe.

You can brush the scones with an egg wash to give them a glossy top if you like too – you can do this just before they go in the oven. They don’t take long, so don’t go far once they have started cooking!

Cheddar Cheese Scones

I thought starting with something like mayonnaise – the first of Granny’s recipes in my file – would be sensible for several reasons. 12 eggs and two litres of oil later and I wasn’t feeling quite so confident. I had naively thought that a bit of common sense and some careful whisking would be all that was needed (perhaps I need to work on both…). So no post on mayonnaise yet.

Instead, a recipe for Onion Tart. A rather bland sounding recipe, but it exceeded expectations and was quick to make too (especially when cheating with ready made shortcrust pastry).

Whilst blind baking the pastry whip out your onion goggles and start finely slicing white onions. Fry gently and layer on the base of the pastry case once cooked. Mix together everything else – cheese, thyme, mustard powder, double cream and seasoning and pour over the onions. I deviated from the original and added spinach for a bit of colour and a sprinkle of oregano too.