Originally published by The Clifton Courier, April 14, 2021

I had some friends stopping by the other week. They were doing that classic interstate weekender thing: squeezing in as many visits with as many people as possible in the space of 48 hours. I’d managed to snag a morning tea slot while they were getting the car they’d borrowed from a friend detail cleaned as a thankyou for the loan.

I had planned on taking them to a nearby café, but that morning it was announced that Brisbane was going into another snap lockdown, so I thought I’d offer them sanctuary in the COVID-free confines of my townhouse. 

And because all I had on hand to offer guests was a bowl of sultana and bran-based cereal, I thought I’d best whip up a batch of scones.

Here’s how that went down:

Now, while I’d like to one day be able to freewheel scones like some kind of master host (this fantasy also involves an impossibly expensive linen apron, tasteful mid-century furniture and a kitchen with triple glazed glass walls that overlook a stunning wilderness view), I’m still at the stage of needing to look up free recipes online. 

The one I saw on Taste.com called for three cups of self-raising flour. Now, number one, after what I’d witnessed in lockdowns past, flour became a hot commodity so I wanted to preserve what I had. I also knew that two men and I would never eat three cups-of-self-raising-flour worth of scones that morning and I didn’t want to be in the house alone with that many scones for three days. 

So I divvied it up by three. 

I took one cup of self-raising flour and sifted it into a bowl. The recipe said 80 grams of butter, but I was dividing it by thirds, so naturally I added 50 grams of butter, which I had chopped into cubes (which is perhaps the most calming, therapeutic sound one can hear).

Then I added a pinch of sea salt flakes and realised the only jam I had in the house was apricot jam. And, look, I’m not knocking apricot jam – in fact, I’m going to endeavour to do apricot jam on a scone – but we all know that scones are the stages upon which strawberry jam shines. I also didn’t have the time to whip any cream. 

But what I did have was fancy salted butter. 

So I decided to go off road – just a bit – to come up with a scone that only needed butter. I had come into a surplus of lemons and had recently bought a whizbang zester, so I grabbed a lemon* and grated the rind into the flour. I also had two bunches of thyme in the fridge – one that was freshly bought for roast-related purposes, the other was from a few weeks back and had started to dry out. I guess you could say I had… too much thyme on my hands. So I pulled the leaves off about eight springs of dry thyme and dumped them hastily into the bowl. I also added three tablespoons of raw sugar, because I felt like this needed a bit of sweetening and the molasses-y dark brown sugar I use for pretty much everything else things inappropriate on this rare occasion. Then I used my fingers to rub the mix into the butter and then added about a third of a cup of milk to the mix and tried to convince a dough to form.  

* This is far from an original thought, but do want to really emphasise how much lemons make almost everything. I feel like lemon should be on the table with the salt and pepper shakers. It’s the third seasoning and deserves to be revered like a holy entity.

It was a little too runny still, so I added a few extra tablespoons of self-raising flour and managed get it into something that could clump together somewhat cohesively. 

Time became increasingly of the essence, so I didn’t roll the dough out – I just kinda smooshed it so it was vaguely flat. Then I used a champagne flute to cut the dough into small circles and put them in a moderate oven for five minutes, with the intention of checking them and then adding a few extra minutes to the clock.  

It was right about the time the alarm went off when I realised I was supposed to pick my friends up. So I turned off the oven as I rushed out and hoped the residual heat would be enough to finish off the scones without burning their little bottoms. 

When I returned home, the smell of lemony calm wafted throughout the house and the scones had cooked through. They were slightly crumbly, but because they were served on a chunky wooden chopping board, it looked homely and rustic. 

If you’re going to make this at home, serve them still warm with amble salted butter.