LAVENDER SCONES

I'm lucky to have a lot of wonderful readers of the blog and my books. Often we end up corresponding, be it about food, travel, gardens, families or life in general.

One such lovely reader, @Maureen Dimont, lives just south of Charleston, South Carolina and we've been chatting on and off, since November last year. She's been busy making Lavender Scones which friends and family just can't get enough of and she's been kind enough to send me the recipe and a photo of her scones.

Bon appetit!

LAVENDER SCONES thanks to Maureen

2 cups flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

4 tablespoons chilled butter

¼ cup sugar

2 teaspoons fresh lavender florets

(I use dried lavender from my lavender patch)

2/3 cup milk

Heat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

Sift together the flour and baking powder.

Rub the butter into the dry ingredients until

the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Stir in the sugar and roughly chopped lavender

florets, reserving a pinch of lavender to sprinkle on the scones before baking them. Add enough milk to make a soft, sticky dough. Bind the mixture together and turn the dough

onto a well-floured work surface. Shape the dough into a circle, gently patting the

top to give a 1 inch depth. Using a flour cutter, stamp out 12 scones. Place on a baking sheet.

Brush the tops with a little milk and sprinkle with the reserved lavender florets. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden brown. Serve warm, with a freshly brewed pot of tea or espresso, your favorite jam or lemon curd. A shape variation is to cut the circle into 8 wedges. NB: Oven temperatures vary so you might need to adjust the baking time.

I've never actually cooked with it, but do have a recipe for lavender biscuits in my scruffy folder full of recipes pulled out of the newspaper or old magazines, before I throw them in the recycling. I really must dig that out and tidy it up.

Please feel free to 'post' here in the Comments, a lavender recipe that you have tried and liked. Will be good to share.

When we lived in France, one of Steve's jobs was to harvest the lavender with Gabriel, the gardener and Gabriel's ancient dad, who acted as the dray horse, pulling the tarpaulin along, while Steve and Gabriel used a slash-and-toss method to cut the lavender. It was such gruelling work, as the lavender field had been left to run wild since the previous summer and blackberry had taken over and was rampant through it. The vicious bramble slashed Gabriel and Steve's arms above their glove line and through the long-sleeved shirts they'd donned to try to protect themselves. Both of them were weeding and cutting out the bramble at the same time as harvesting.

Once they got it to the trailer and hooked up to Gabriel's wagon, the pair of them pulled out whatever bramble remained after harvesting, then trundled it through to a distillery near Albi. It was apparently a ramshackle operation and apparatus made up of old pipes, rusty cylinders, funnels and buckets as well as a fire and flue job but it worked! There was a little trickle of oil at the end - it seemed TOO little after all their hard work. I think they got about 60 mls out of it.

Lavender is good for so many things and a couple of drops of the oil sprinkled on your pillow will help you sleep... so I'm told.

Bon nuit!