My home town is called Dunedin which means “little Edinburgh”, there’s a very strong Scottish influence and heritage in this little town of ours. We have a statue of the Scottish poet Robbie Burns in the town centre, a castle called Larnach castle, haggis served now and then, and Octagonal Day once a year where all the pipe bands from all over the country come to compete. It’s not at all uncommon to see a piper on a street corner busking, or hear the hurl of the pipes drifting out over the city.  A man in a kilt walking down the street will not even get a second glance here, unless he has particularly nice legs of course!

Scones are Scottish in origin and very much a part of our cultural heritage, including girdle scones. An interesting fact for you - Did you know that Scone Palace is the place where Scottish kings were crowned?

Why are they called girdle scones? Apparently the Scots refer to a griddle as a girdle and these little scones are not cooked in the oven they are cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan with a little salted butter.

If you are sweltering in the heat in the northern hemisphere and don’t want to turn on that oven, this is the perfect way to make scones. If you are freezing in the southern hemisphere, then treat yourself to some hot scones. See? Perfect, no matter where you live.

Unlike an oven baked scone, these are ever so slightly crisp on the outside, with the gentle flavour of brown butter. They are super fast to make and of course you can use any of the flavour variations that you would with an oven baked scone. Currant, cranberry, sultanas, or cheese would all work well. You could cut them into wedges before you cook them as I have, or make one giant girdle scone and cut into wedges after it’s cooked if you wish. This recipe is easily doubled. Fast to make, great to eat, what more could you ask from a wee bit ‘o bread.

Girdle Scones

- variation from the Edmonds cookbook.

Note: this is not a sweet scone - the mix is plain, if you like a sweet scone you may add 3 Tblspns sugar in the dry ingredients stage.

• 1 cup flour
• 2 tspns baking powder
• 1 Tblspn of butter
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup of currants
• aprox 1/2 cup of milk

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl

Cut or rub in the butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs

Add enough milk to make a soft dough and shape into a circle on a lightly floured board. Roll out to roughly 1.5 cm (1/2 an inch) thick and cut into eight wedges.

Cook on a hot greased girdle, hotplate or frying pan until golden and cooked in the centre - this will be roughly 5 minutes on each side.

Snuggle them up on the girdle arranged in the same way you cut them.

When you turn your scone wedges place them gently on the hot surface and only turn once.

Serve hot from the pan, slathered in your favourite jam.

I know I promised Nancy croissant for the weekend, but I am afraid I just got too busy with an unexpected trip into work and helping some friends move house. Since croissant are time consuming to make I really needed a free weekend to make them. So I’ll keep my fingers crossed that next weekend will be croissant!

So I present to you a fairly typical weekend quick baking project with a twist! Lemonade scones. They are not made with old fashioned lemonade, they are made with soda, like sprite, 7UP or what ever your local brand of clear mostly flavourless soda is.

These are so simple that initial thoughts are that they cannot possibly be good. But they are light and sweet and the cream in them adds the fat that is so important for scones. I doubled the recipe to make a large number for the hungry people that I knew would be lifting furniture and boxes. I had a lovely jar of bright orange home-made apricot jam from my mother that I teamed up with these.

These scones are best eaten on the day they are made, they really do not keep well, but it does not seem to be a problem to get rid of a batch fairly quickly!

Lemonade Scones

• 3 cups of self raising flour
• 1 cup of cream
• 1 cup of lemonade soda (Sprite/7UP etc)

If you measure your cream first, then your soda and use the same measuring cup - beware .. this is what you’ll get! Personally I think this is quite fun and like to do it this way- but be ready for it! Isaac was most amused by the soda mushroom.

Mix all ingredients together gently to make a soft dough, either add more liquid or flour a little at a time if your dough is too dry or too wet.

Shape into a rectangle roughly an inch to an inch and a half thick and cut into circles with a 3 inch cookie cutter or the rim of a glass. I’ve even been known to use the rim of a vase or jar rims if that’s all I can find. Really most things can be improvised and there is not a lot of need to have fancy stuff in the kitchen.

Place on a lightly floured tray, brush the tops with a little milk and bake at 220C/428F for 10-15 minutes. You can put them fairly close together - this will help them rise up and give good height to your scones.

Yep that is all there is to it!

This recipe makes roughly 12-14 light and sweet scones.

Snuggle your scones up in a clean tea towel or cloth and serve them with some butter and jam. Scones are always best slightly warm, but not straight out of the oven.

I promise I’ll get to the croissant next weekend - although I suspect I might have to get another lot of chocolate for them, it seems to have mysteriously vanished….

My mother makes the most beautiful scones, as do many Kiwis. It’s the English ancestry that does it I think. Scones and pikelets are a part of NZ life. There is even a special category for them at Agricultural and Pastoral shows - where all the very best scones and the pinnacle of scone making skills are displayed.

I remember my aunt making massive batches of scones for all the shearers that had come to the farm to help with the shearing. They frightened me a little, and I used to hide behind the wool bales with my cousins and watch them cutting all that lovely fleece off the sheep. I’d wait there, knowing that the hot scones would arrive soon and the shearers would usually toss one our way.

My mother’s scones were always served with home made raspberry jam and cream. I love them like this and make them quite often. But this tutorial is for Cheddar scones, perfect with a hot bowl of soup. The recipe is an adaptation of the Edmonds Cookbook scone recipe - which is the one that most people start with when they go to whip up a batch of scones.

New Zealand Cheddar and Onion Scones.

Place in a large bowl

• 3 cups of flour
• 6 tspns baking powder
• 1/4 tspn of salt
• 50 grams of butter (chilled and cut into chunks)

Next rub the butter into the flour until it looks like fine crumbs; make sure there are no big chunks of butter left in the flour.

Add:

• one small brown onion chopped finely
• 1/2 cup strong cheddar
• 1-2 tspns parmesan cheese
• 1/2 tspn paprika

Stir through to mix

Add:

• 1 1/4 cup of whole milk (you can use 3/4 cup of milk and 1/2 cup of plain yogurt for a softer scone)

Stir with a knife - or metal spoon to just mix and no more - do not stir the heck out of it - resist the temptation.

It should look like this - a slightly sticky dough.

Place your dough on a floured bench and knead lightly, until it just comes together, flour your hands as much as needed.

Shape gently into a fat rectangle, with the dough about an inch thick - be gentle with the dough, just push it into position gently. You will notice I said gently three - err no 4 times in this little piece of instruction - that’s because I mean it!

Cut into rectangles. I like to make mine fairly large in size, I normally cut 12 or 16 scones. If you decide to cut them smaller, keep in mind they will not take as long to cook.

Place on an oven tray fairly close together, with a small gap between each one. You want to give them room to expand, but also close enough that they join together as they cook to force some height into the scone also. So roughly 1 cm or 1/4 inch. Sprinkle a little grated cheese on the top of each scone.

Bake in a 220 C or 428 F oven for 10-15 minutes. Every oven is different, so keep an eye on your scones and take them out when they are golden brown on the top and springy to the touch. You can cut one of the larger ones in half and take a peek if you are not sure. If you undercook your scones they will be doughy.

Serve while warm from the oven with butter and don’t feel the slightest bit guilty about eating several.