When the weather turned earlier this week, I figured I'd make some soup this weekend and that it should be complimented by a plate of hot, buttered cheese scones. My mind then wandered off at a tangent as I bought some Wensleydale to go with Bath Olivers - recommended to me by Lizzie (aka @Mrs_Gaffer). Whilst perusing Ocado online, I came across Wensleydale with Ginger and thus, Wensleydale and Ginger scones were born.
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| Slightly singed scones with even more cheese |
Wensleydale was one of my favourite cheeses long before Wallace and Gromit appeared on the scene. For the uninitiated, it has a very delicate flavour and is very crumbly too. It works well with sweet things such as proper apple pie (with a top and a bottom) or ginger cakes. I have yet to try it with Bath Olivers as I used it all in my scones and will therefore have to buy more next week.
Because I already had a jar of stem ginger in the fridge, I decided to just buy regular Wensleydale and to combine the two into a scone. That way, I could make some plain Wensleydale scones to see what they were like on their own - and to feed to my fussy toddler, just in case - and I could do some with ginger in as well.
So I made two sets of mixture, one with cheese, a touch of cayenne and a smidgen of mustard; the others with cheese and finely diced ginger. I placed them in the oven to bake and couldn't work out why, after 12 minutes, the plain scones had barely risen, let alone browned. Then I noticed I'd stupidly switched my oven on to grill mode in my sleep-befuddled haze (this was 7.30am**) and so consequently, the ginger ones were cooked and nearly singed on top***, whilst I had to rebake the plain Wensleydale ones again.
The resulting scones were both enjoyable, although the Wensleydale flavour is so subtle in the scones that you'd either need a lot more of that and barely any ginger to get both flavours; or as I would recommend, you should just make the ginger scones, omit the cheese from the recipe and eat it on the side in a big fat lump.
Just getting back to the weather - after barbecuing myself in the sunshine all day (and eating a dodgy looking ice lolly), I returned home to find I was shivering cold and so ended up also making this tomato soup from BBC Good Food. This is the quickest soup ever and is great when a tin of rather foul Heinz tomato soup is the only thing in your store cupboard.
So here's the recipe for both sets of scones.
- 225g self raising flour
- 50g cold butter, cubed
- 145ml buttermilk (or 140ml milk and 5ml lemon juice), warmed
- pinch table salt
-then either-
- 150g Wensleydale, grated
- pinch cayenne pepper
- pinch English mustard powder
-or-
- 1 ball stem ginger, finely chopped
- 150g Wensleydale (optional if you want to try the Wensleydale and Ginger version)
- Preheat the oven to 220C/200C fan/425f. Place a baking tray in the oven to get hot.
- In a large mixing bowl, rub the butter into the flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
- Add your other chosen ingredients and give a quick mix to spread through the bowl evenly.
- Pour in the buttermilk and work to form a soft, dough using a round ended knife. Don't over work the dough.
- Tip out onto a floured work surface, pat to be about 2.5cm/1 inch thick and then cut using a pastry cutter. I used an 7cm cutter for my ginger ones and got four from the mix (and one for the dog) and a 5cm cutter for the plain cheese ones and got eight (and one for the dog).
- Remove the baking tray from the oven, place the scones on to the tray and bake for 10-12 minutes. If you're baking larger scones, leave them for 14 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly before serving with lashings of butter.
*cold hands = warm heart
**at this point, I'd abandoned the soup plan in favour of a day out at the local-ish farm park with Miss A so the scones had been promoted to picnic fodder
***thankfully I didn't wake the husband with the smoke alarm for once
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| Dodgy ice lolly |
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