Orange and Poppy Seed Cream Scones

I’m a little late, but happy New Year! I lost my car keys on January 1^st and they turned out to be in my mums bag, OF ALL PLACES. 

I mean, who puts their keys in their mum’s bag at 4am on New Years Eve and then forgets? WHO? That’s not important, what happened before that incident was important. It involved flour and cream, additional flavours and the Kenwood KM330.  

So, lets kick off the year with scones, and not the kind that leave the roof of your mouth feeling scone-like. You know what I’m talking about, right - that seriously weird texture you get in your mouth after having a store bought scone? It’s the blindingly obvious indication that your scones weren’t really homemade from that seriously cute teahouse. 

Oh, the lies.

Scones were the first things I made in Food Technology (home ec) way back at the wee age of 11. I guess, the main reason why we made them had a lot to do with how darn easy they are to rustle up. Not to mention how delicious they are in that fattening and comforting kind of way.

From 2004 to 2013, scones involved cold butter, a knife and a tiny bit of elbow grease (by that I mean having floury hands and cutting shapes). In 2014, thanks to the Kenwood dough hook and the realization that you can produce a softer crumb with full fat cream instead of butter, the making of scones involves the flick of a button. Aaaaand the cutting of shapes that begged to be triangles but sadly, clearly, aren’t.

The trick is to let the dough hook run for half a second, until everything is just combined, because this is not breakfast brioche, but breakfast scones, studded with crunchy little poppy seeds and the faintest flavour of orange. You hardly know its there, but when you notice it; you’ll thank me for passively making you put it there.

If you don’t have a mixer, it should be your new years resolution to purchase one. But if you’re not buying it (geddit?), these beauts are made just as well by hand. Just pour your dry ingredients onto a surface, make a well, pour, knead and cut.  

Best of 2012

Salted Caramel Macarons 

There is just less than 24 hours of 2012 left and many will soon be blurring out their words, and it might sound a bit like: “Aaaah, what a year it’s been”. As I listen to one of my doggy woggy’s semi silently bark whilst what I can only describe as a dream festered in a deep sleep it becomes apparent that 365 days is not adequate. I want more days and long nights in my years dammit, more time to convince myself to stop being lazy and do productive things and more time to conquer those productive things.

But then something happened - I came across the fabulous likes of Poires, Londonbakes & the Cake Hunter blogging about their best of 2012. The right thing to do was to obviously follow in their inspirational bloggy footsteps, so I gathered mine and then realised, well, that I am chatting absolute shit. This has been a long year and 365 are aplenty. 

To think that I was gently heating milk for the Miette cake THIS year is also mental.

Here are the blog’s top five recipes of 2012 from the most popular descending. If you followed, subscribed, commented or just read a measly snippet of my poorly written blog with the occasional improving piece of photography then thank you. Thank you thank you thank you! You are what keeps me baking, snapping and sharing. 

That’s pretty deserving of a very happy New Year to all of my cyber sisters and brothers. 

1. Hot Milk Cake

2. Turkish Sini Gatmer

3. Muhallebi

4. Miette Double Chocolate Cupcakes

5. Raspberry and Apple Crumble

Love Em xx