Drop Everything the Drop Scones are Ready

Well I have always called them drop scones even when the recipe refers to them as Scotch Pancakes or more particularly Betsy's Scotch Pancakes which is how they are titled in Dan Lepard's book Short and Sweet. This was the recipe I chose to attempt from the 3 that were targeted for this week's #ShortandTweet challenge.

They did not go entirely smoothly but here is my plate of fresh off the griddle, ready for the butter pancakes.

My first hurdle was a batter that was too thick, even after adding the full amount of milk, and then I could not get the temperature of the griddle right, way too hot to start with and you can see a rather singed offering peeking out from under some more tender morsels in the picture above.

Getting the heat right so they cook quickly enough but did not burn was not easy and judging when to turn was also a bit tricky to start with but here I have tried to show that you will see bubbles forming, and once they are showing across the whole pancake that seemed the best point to flip them over.

 I was going to eat these for Sunday brunch with a mixture of savoury and sweet toppings so I cut back the sugar from 75g to 50g and am glad I did.

So here is my sample of plated pancakes. The top has blue cheese and a drizzle of forest honey, to the left smoked salmon and ricotta and to the right quince & cider jelly and ricotta.

The blue cheese, Borough Blue, was bought yesterday at Halwill Community Market from the lovely Shebbear Cheese  stall and very good it is too. I cannot remember where I read the suggestion to drizzle honey on blue cheese but it worked really well and I chose a forest honey rather than a floral one to play safe. The quince and cider jelly was a gift from a work colleague and was made by her mother who lives in Germany. It was so much better than the basic quince jelly I had tried to make myself so I will definitley be trying the addition of some good local cider in my next batch.

Yesterday was a bit of a local foodie foray as we started out by driving to Black Torrington to make our first visit to the Reddog Bakery there. The bakery are running some bread making courses this year and as I had signed up for one it seemed a good idea to make sure I knew how to get there. Sat Nav in rural Devon can be a little perplexing when you find a whole village has the same post code, as does my own North Devon hamlet. Well we came away with a wonderful selection of bread, pasties, pain raisin and a superb slab of moist and beautifully spiced carrot cake.

After a stop off at the Halwill market for the cheese and some devon red beef we drove on to Okehampton to visit the new cafe/cookshop called eat toast. I was delighted to find the place buzzing with customers and they served us some really good coffee. I would have sampled the cakes too if we had not already snaffled a pain raisin each from our earlier bakery shop.

A quick flash back to last weeks challenge when I did make the wraps but got them so wrong it did not seem worth a post. I managed to produce something more akin to scandinavian cripsbread than a wrap so I ate one with some chopped beetroot, feta and a sprinking of za'atar but the rest were donated to the chickens' treat bucket. Again I think my downfall was too hot or certainly too long cooking, supple they certainly were not.

Here is a glimpse.