These are from the rather gorgeous Rose Bakery cookbook Breakfast Lunch Tea, which our friend Jude gave us as a present (not using the royal we there – we as in me and Fran, the wife, as it was our wedding anniversary).

Founded by Rose Carrarini, who co-founded Villandry in London, the bakery/cafe looks like a great place; I’d love to visit one of these days. It’s basically doing something that Fran’s talked about for years – selling English teashop type goodies (and beyond) to the French, who apparently love that kind of thing.

The main emphasis seems to be on wholesome, simple snacks and “little meals” – granola to soup, by way of tartlets, mini-pizzas, cookies and scones. In fact, the sort of thing I’d love to sell in a cafe-bakery if I ever owned one!

This is the second recipe I tried. And rather delicious it is too.

Scones. I love scones, but mostly I just make plain ones. These, however, include that irresistible ingredient – maple syrup.

They are v tasty, with the maple a fairly subtle factor. Mostly, they’re defined by being very short and crumbly. Too short and crumbly arguably, as they fall to bits a bit too easily while cooking. But definitely a recipe to return to.

Here’s the recipe, to make 12 scones, using a 50mm round cutter.

Preheat the oven to 200C (or 180 if you have a hot fan oven).

260g plain flour
80g wholemeal flour
35g rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder (“very heaped” Carrarini writes)
1 teaspoon caster sugar (ditto)
1/2 teaspoon salt
160g unsalted butter, diced up
4 tablespoons maple syrup
4 tablespoons milk

Sift together the flours, add the salt and oats, and mix.
Crumb in the butter.
Mix the maple syrup and milk in a separate bowl or jug, then pour that into the dry ingredients and mix with fork (I like to use those old, bone-handled palette knives)
Bring together to a moist but not sticky dough, adding a little more milk or flour accordingly.
Do not over-knead the dough.
Roll out to about 30mm thick, stamp out scones, place on greased baking sheet, brush with beaten egg.
Bake for 20 minutes.

“Serve warm” apparently. I had mine with plenty of butter and homemade apple and blackberry jam and they were yum.

Feel a strong bond with this cookbook already. (It helps that it’s a nice object too; only quibble is the presence of a few too many pics of cute kids when they could be showing us more pics of, you know, the results of the actual recipes.)

Another stupendous recipe care of Dan Lepard in the Weekend Guardian. Recipe here.

I wouldn’t call myself a scone connoisseur, but I’ve certainly been making them most of my life. I’ve always been something of a purist with scones – 98% of the time I’ll make plain scones. No sultanas or any of that stuff. Occasionally savoury ones with cheese.

But I do like ginger, I love ginger beer, and I had some crystallized ginger in the cupboard. Dan Lepard does credit this recipe (or at least one using lemonade) to Marilyn and Gary Barker’s Patchwork Teahouse, “set deep in Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges”. Never been myself, but thanks to Marilyn and Gary, and thanks to Dan for passing it along, with his ginger beer variation.

They don’t use any butter – you just mix your crystallized ginger and beer with crème fraîche and egg then blend that into the flours. Easy peasy.

Made these on Friday, with my in-laws arriving. They’ve from Devon, home of the scone, but seemed very happy with this variation. And luckily, entirely unbidden, they arrived with a large pot of clotted cream, making the whole experience even more delectable.