My sister Méabh's scones....

Christ on a bike it's absolutely lashing here today, perfect day for tae and scones. Nice little scone recipe here .. notable for the speed it can be thrown together!

Preheat oven to 220C/430F

Sieve 16oz self-raising flour with 2 heaped teaspoons baking powder into a large bowl.
Take 3oz butter from the fridge and rub in til something resembling breadcrumbs results.
Add 3 tablespoons of brown sugar and a pinch of salt.
Pour in 10oz of milk and barely mix together. Turn out on a counter and flatten into a round about an inch high.
Make scones with cookie cutter or a drinking glass or whatever you have lying around. Brush the tops with milk and stick them in the pre-heated oven until done.

The recipe my sister gave me was half this amount and would make 9 small scones for her. It only made six for me however so I doubled the recipe to make a dozen larger scones. Also, because her scones were smaller, they only needed 8 mins in the oven .. my scones needed about 13 mins before they were done so just bear all that in mind people!

These are very tasty crumbly scones although I did accidentally use baking soda instead of baking powder so might try and make them with the right ingredients next time .. right I'm off to make swiss roll...

Lamingtons Oscar Style

Well I first heard about Lamingtons from my old friend Emma from Wellington. I didn't taste one til quite recently though even though I heard of them years and years ago... not readily available in Ireland!
I made them a few weeks ago but the recipe I have, which is a Kiwi recipe, left me a little underwhelmed .. or else I made the sponge incorrectly.

So I decided to put my own little Lamington recipe together.

You start off by making the sponge from the preceding Lemon Cake recipe Instead of making a lemon syrup I made a syrup from blood orange.
Syrup Recipe:
Zest and juice from two blood oranges (medium size)
3/4 cup of white sugar
10 cloves

 This is then poured over the sponge which I have sliced and pricked with a knife all over so as to aid penetration of the juice. You allow this cool pretty completely.

Chocolate Coating:
In the Kiwi cookbook I have they use a cocoa-based coating but I'm not a particular fan of that so I just took 190 g of milk chocolate and 190g of cream and cooked them together on a low heat.

Allow the chocolate to cool and thicken  a bit before you roll the lamington squares in it. The thicker it is then the thicker the coating of chocolate will be on it. I went for something about the consistency of honey ish. Take the dipped Lamington and then roll it in dessicated coconut and leave to cool in the fridge.

And that's about it ... I had two with a big mug of tae last night and I have to say I thought they were extremely tasty. Normally I don't like to make anything that takes a lot of prep but these are worth it ...

My Sister Deirdre's Brown Bread....

Well it's a treasured thing to come across a really good brown bread recipe and this is one of the best ones. Not really what you would call a traditional Irish soda bread as there are loads of ingredients in it. Most traditional ones have a fairly minimal set of ingredients. One of the important things in this kind of bread is that where it calls for coarse wholewheat flour you should really not substitute for just wholewheat flour. Tis worth seeking it out even if it's not available in the local shop. In Vancouver (possibly in the rest of N. America) they don't seem to have coarse but they have flour labelled 'stone-milled' which is pretty rough.

And here is the recipe.....

120g Cream flour (all-purpose will do)
120g wheat bran
90g wheat germ
90g oat bran
300g pinhead oatmeal
325g coarse wholemeal flour
325g extra coarse wholemeal flour
1 heaped tsp baking powder
3 heaped tsp bread soda
1.3 Litres of buttermilk




If you can't get the extra coarse then just use 650g  of coarse.
Preheat oven to 450F/230C.
Mix it all together dry in a bowl, must be well mixed to ensure the baking powder and baking soda get evenly distributed. Add 1.3 litres of buttermilk and mix thoroughly. If you can't get buttermilk (or just don't have it handy) then get one 1.3 litres of normal milk and add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to it. Swish it around and leave it for 15 mins and then lash that  in instead.
Prep the loaf tins by rubbing butter all round the inside and then coating in wheat germ...
When that's done divide evenly between three loaf tins and pop it in the oven.
10 mins on 450F/230C and then turn down the oven to 270F/130C for another hour.


Forgot to say that you can sprinkle oatmeal or sesame seeds (as pictured) over the top as the final step if you wish...