Scones: the perfect friend-food

I love scones. It's the perfect food to make and eat with a good friend, accompanied with hot tea, of course. Or they are easy to take along while you are on a picknick - they are firm and you can take the cream or filling along in a seperate box. The best scone I ever ate was in the Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow, where I was this summer. The scone was delicious and the cream was just perfect. The tea I ordered was honey almond - which also belongs to the best teas I've ever had.

I baked these scones tuesday, with my friend Sabrina. She is gone now for 6 months to Canada and for another 3 to Cambridge. We've been saying we were going to bake scones for months, so I'm happy we managed to bake them before she went abroad! I made a few pictures of them and I'n not sure which one I like best, so I'll just post them all! And there are a lot of recipes on how to make scones around. This is just my version!

Ingredients
- 375 g flour, I use whole wheat because it's healthy and I think it fits scones!
- 1.5 tablespoon sugar / honey
- Pinch of salt
- 4.5 teaspoons baking powder
- 150 g cold butter, diced in small cubes
- 190 ml heavy whipping cream
- 3 eggs
- extra egg and some milk
- optional ingredients: like lemon peel, cinnamon, dried fruits, nuts... I usually go for lemon peel, but I suggest that cinnamon, almonds and small pieces of apple and even raisins will be a great combination for the fall!

What to do with them?
- Put all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

- Using knives, "cut" the cold butter in the flour mixture.

- Add the wet ingredients (eggs, cream, and perhaps honey), mixing with the knives or your fingers. Be careful not to over-knead!

- If you have other ingredients, add them too.

- On a floured surface, shape the batter into a square or rectangle, of about 20-25 cm.

- Cut this batter into 16 pieces and put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

- Mix together an egg and some cream (or milk) and brush this over the scones.

- Bake them in the oven at 200°C for 20 minutes.

I take it you want something on these scones, right? My personal preference is lemon curd and cream. I think the best cream is mascarpone mixed with whipped cream. You can buy lemon curd, or you can make your own!

Ingredients
- 3 eggs
- 150 g sugar
- 80 ml of lemon juice (this is about 1 large lemon. You could also mix lemon juice with a little lime juice, what I did here)
- 50 g butter

What to do with them?
- Put the eggs, sugar and lemon juice in a saucepan. Most recipes say you need to do this au-bain-marie, but putting it directly on the stove works fine as well.

- While on the stove (medium heat), keep stirring constantly! This is the key, as otherwise you'll get lemon-flavoured scrambled eggs. How long you have to mix depends on quite a few factors like the humidity and temperature, but you'll notice when it's thickened and ready. For me, this usually is at 4-5 minutes.

- Take it from the heat and stir in the butter. As it cools down, you need to stir the lemon curd every once in a while, or it will form a skin on top.

- You can also add lemon peel to the curd to intensify the flavour. I choose to put the peel of the lemon in the scone batter, so I didn't have any peel left.

And the best way to eat them is invite some friends, have a pot of tea ready and perhaps a movie. Scones make me nostalgic for romantic costume movies, of times where "high tea" still was part of the day. But I think scones also fit an extravagant breakfast table, together with a boiled egg and yoghurt.

Oh, and do tell me which of these three pictures you prefer. I cannot decide myself! Anyway, a fine day to you and enjoy your next meal!

Bread Pizza

This is a simple lunch I often make when I am home. It's really easy and doesn't take much time. The day after I got my camera I made this lunch again to practise. So behold, this photo is one of the very first photo's taken with my camera!

- At least in the Netherlands, there are a lot of different types of breads available that you only need to bake at home. I guess you could also use fresh bread, but we always have a few of these breads in storage. You could also take something like pita bread, that will be even more like a pizza!

- If you have a bake-at-home bread, cut it open before baking. If you choose pita bread, you could just put the ingredients on top.

- Take a small can of tomato puree and mix it with your preferred flavouring. Here, I used pepper, salt, garlic, dried oregano and fresh basil and chives. You can also add a bit of olive oil for the taste. Spread this tomato mixture on both halves of the bread.

- Cut an onion into small cubes and scatter on top of the tomato puree. You can add ingredients like paprika, zuchinni, mushrooms or some meats. Here, I added some raw ham.

- Finish it off with your favourite cheese, like morazella or parmezan.

- Bake it for 8-10 minutes at 220° C.

- You can serve it like this, or if you want to be healthy, put it on top of a salad.

- Bon apetit!

Confessions of a Food Lover

If there is something true about me, then it is that I have way too many hobbies and passions. Making costumes is one of them. Photography is one of them. And certainly, cooking is one of them too. I have a different blog, the Needle and the Lens that will focus about costumes, and this one will be dedicated to food! Photography binds everything together. I recently bought my first DLSR camera - the Canon 550D. I still have a lot to learn, so any suggestions about how I can improve my photo's is highly appreciated!

When I was young, I always helped my mother with baking cakes and pies. She cannot eat sugar (and now I can't either), so if she wanted to have something sweet, she needed to bake it herself. I think apple pies were out favourite, but we also made a lot of marbled chocolate-and-vanilla cakes, or mocha pies. Since the last few years, I've taken up on baking, and now my mother helps me, instead of the other way around. It's not just baking I love, I also love cooking. I love all sort of cuisines, but curiously, I'm not that fond of the traditional Dutch cuisine with potato stews and the likes.

I always find that cooking (and baking too) is highly personal. There are people who don't like a certain type of meat, people who don't like tomatos, and so on. If there is a specific vegetable I don't like, then it's leek. And while I absolutely love cooking books and can spend afternoons just looking in them, I never stay true to any recipe. Perhaps I like it with a little more pepper, or substitute one of the vegetables for another. For me, cooking books are just a great inspiration - something to twist to my own tastes. That is why the recipes I will write are rather loose. I might make notes on things that you can add or substitute and make the recipes your own. All I intend to do is inspire you!