Lavender and lemon scones

Last week I was sent some lovely baking sugars from Sainsbury’s.

Lavender sugar, cinnamon sugar and vanilla sugar (the lavender container had cracked so I put it into a jar straight away). I really wanted to try the lavender sugar, as I thought it sounded so unusual, but pretty, so today I made some scones.

I used a basic scone recipe from The Great British book of Baking, but adapted it a bit. It made 6 huge wedge scones, but if you have patience to use cutters you could easily make 8-10 I would think.

Ingredients:

250g plain flour

3 tsp baking powder (I used 3 sachets of Dr Oetker baking powder)

35g caster sugar

15g lavender sugar

1 medium egg

50g pure spread

100ml soya milk

zest of one lemon

I used my food processor to make them, as the recipe had instructions for that and I wanted to see if it was any easier. I am not sure if it was in the end? Pre-heat the oven to 220C and grease a baking tray. Then, pulse together the spread, flour, baking powder and sugars for a minute until it forms breadcrumbs (or rub in with your fingers).

Whisk together the milk and egg, add in the lemon zest and pour this over the flour mixture, keeping the mixer going, until it forms a dough. I ended up with dough slightly too wet, so had to add in a tbsp of flour, so keep an eye on it!

Tip this out and gently knead, and shape into a round. Then slice into wedges or use a pastry cutter to make round scones.

Place on the baking tray and bake for 10-12 minutes until well-risen and golden. Then cool on a rack.

Because they didn’t look very lavendery I made a little bit of icing to drizzle over the top with icing sugar, lemon juice, water and a teeny bit of violet food colouring.

Then we sat down and enjoyed afternoon tea.

So civilised 🙂 The lavender flavour came through- I didn’t want to add too much in case they ended up a little “soapy”, but I think next time I would add a little bit more, or maybe infuse some milk with the lavender and then use that for the icing.

Yesterday we went into London for the day- we had tickets for the Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition at the British Museum. We went in early to go to Borough market- I had never been there before and it was fab, it reminded me of the big fresh farmer and food markets from America/ Canada (eg the one in Seattle or Vancouver)- stalls selling freshly baked bread, freshly picked fruit and vegetables and food stalls everywhere. I had a spicy lentil salad for lunch, which ended up being super spicy! I bought some honeycomb to take the spicy taste away- I still have not mustered up the courage to try making my own.

We walked about 2 miles I think from the market to the museum, and had a little look around before it was time for us to go to the exhibition. I found it very interesting, I always liked learning about the Romans anyway, and it was set up really well. I could not believe it when we finished as we had been in there for 90 mins! It felt more like 30.

The downside with being out all day was that I had to cover up my shoulder graze. We tried to make the dressing in a sort of arch shape, so it would not touch the graze, but as soon as I put my cardi and coat over the top it was pressed down onto it. Some of it has sort of formed a scab, but some of it is still sticky, and when I got home I had to then peel the dressing off which was very painful (and also ripped off some of the stuff that had formed).

This is my collection of dressings I panic bought on Thursday morning- then it turned out that the dressings were not big enough so Andy went to Boots and got some 10cm ones, which only just cover it.

OK it does not look that bad in the photo, but it is really massive! And the bruise on my face is going a lovely yellow colour too!

I decided that today I would leave it uncovered (I need an 80’s style off the shoulder top to wear!) to try and make it dry out a bit. Also need to tie my hair in a bun as otherwise the ends keep brushing over it. And this is harder than you would think as I can’t really raise my arm above my shoulder.

Andy went on a run this morning, and I was planning on an 8 mile run, but I decided that a rest was more sensible. I am a bit worried as I have a 10k race next weekend (I think that should be OK) but then 2 weeks later I have a half marathon. I really have not managed to increase my long run recently, so I think it might end up being a bit of a challenge. But when I move my shoulder hurts, and there is no point in making it worse I don’t think.

I had a lot of work to do as well, so I read for a bit, did some work and then made pancakes. These worked out quite well. I didn’t want to open a tin of pumpkin for the puree, so I used 20g peanut flour, 20g wholegrain spelt, some baking powder, vanilla, about 100ml soya milk and then 5g chia seeds. I let it all gel while I did more work, and then cooked the pancakes. I burnt one side of one batch, but they turned out pretty well.

The rest of the day has been spent baking (see above!), catching up with housework, watching the grand prix and football, and generally chilling out.

Have you ever tried lavender before? I had some tasty dark chocolate with lavender, so I think the next thing I try could be cookies with chocolate chips and lavender sugar.