Pinwheel scones, or, lining your stomach before a big day in the sun

My most memorable stein (sorry, tea party) breakfast was an epic fry up (including sweet things) on the bbq for 10 people, all washed down with a magnum of Moet that someone had won. Very classy! It still didn’t stop the usual dramas (passing out from too much sun, getting tearful and upset at trivialities, becoming best friends with someone covered in mud, lipstick lesbian show-kissing, kick to the head in the mosh pit, finding people shagging in the bushes), but it was a good effort nonetheless.

While the organisers these days offer a better rounded and more palatable food and beverage experience than the ill-begotten nacho beans and Export Gold of my undergraduate tea parties, it is still wise to line your stomach in the morning rather than waking up and reaching for the beer bong before you’ve got your costume gaffer taped on.

If you have it within you to be so organised as to cook them the night before, these pinwheel scones will serve beautifully in the morning with a side of beer or cheap fizzy when warmed up in the oven or microwave. They’ll also provide a welcome effort-free dinner once you’ve managed a blurry and nauseous trip back home on the Orbiter, preferably dressed like a buzzy bee, a Transformer made of cardboard boxes, or a slutty [insert noun here]. Don’t drink and fry, kids, or you won’t get your bond back.

Pinwheel scones – one for the baker bots

Scone base

4 1/2 cups white flour

3 tablespoons baking powder

A big pinch of salt

120g butter

Up to 2 cups of milk 

Pre-heat the oven to 210 degrees C. Combine the flour, salt and baking powder in a large bowl (I use a punch bowl) – you can sift them together or give it all a quick whisk to remove lumps.

Conventional wisdom would have it that you dice the butter, add it to the flour and then work it in with your fingertips, however I can’t abide the feeling of dough beneath my nails so I do one of two things. The first is to chill the butter and grate it in. The second, lazy version, which many will tell you is heresy (but we did it all the time at the cafe and everything was fine), is to melt the butter and just pour it right in. Either way, add the butter and combine everything well.

Make a well in the middle and pour in most of the milk. ‘Stir’ the dough quickly with a butter knife – things will be getting thick and doughy. Add more milk if it’s a bit dry, or more flour if it’s a bit sloppy. When it’s lovely and soft and not at all sticky, and is staying in one big ball, sprinkle the CLEAN CLEAN bench with flour, turn out the dough in the middle and give it a quick knead with your CLEAN CLEAN hands. Roll the dough out about 1.5cm thick into a big rectangle – the longer your dough is along the edge facing you, the more scones you’ll have. Add your fillings, leaving a strip about an inch wide clear along the edge furthest away from you so as to make sealing the scones easier.

Starting at the edge closest to you, very carefully roll the whole thing away from you into a long roll, then slice to make individual scones. Lightly dust a tray with flour and lay out the scones, leaving a good inch or so in between them. Check them after 10 minutes, and cook until finished – depending on the size of your scones this could take 20 – 25 minutes in all. If you’re unsure, give the dough a poke – if should be firm and spring back against your finger, and the scones should be a light golden brown on the bottom.

If you’re storing these, wait until they are cold before keeping in an airtight container and eat within a couple of days. Give them a quick microwave if they are more than a day old.

Sweet mix

Add 1T cinnamon and 2T sugar to the flour before adding the butter. Spread the rolled out dough with butter or softened cream cheese, then sprinkle liberally with brown sugar and cinnamon (or spices of your choosing). Add orange or lemon zest or small bits of dried fruit (apricots, sultanas) for extra points. One you have rolled and sliced the pinwheels, sprinkle a bit more cinnamon or raw sugar over the top before you stick them in the oven. These can be made to be quite dainty. Also, imagine how good nutella scones would be.

Savoury mix – aka the Bakehouse special

Add 1 ½ t dried green herbs or paprika and 1/4c cheese to the flour before adding the butter. Spread the rolled out dough with relish, tomato paste, or sweet chilli. Sprinkle it with cheese and add any of the following: chopped up bacon or ham, diced tomato (take out the seeds or it will get sloppy), diced mushrooms, grated courgette, finely shredded spinach, diced onion, fresh green herbs, drained kernel corn. For bonus points, spread the side that is going to be the centre of the pinwheel with a thick glob of cream cheese. Pat the filling down gently with your hands before rolling carefully and slicing. It might get messy, and if things aren’t really sitting still you can hold them together with a skewer while cooking. Sprinkle with cheese and seeds before cooking. These may end up the size of your head.

Everything pie, or, a quiche by any other name would drive off the punters

I’m not sure what people’s antipathy towards quiche is. Maybe it has vague connotations of wankery and the perilous classism of mid 90s cafe culture, maybe it has too many consonants and is pronounced in a way which makes our brutish antipodean ears baulk, maybe it is French. Either way, quiche is pretty much the same thing as bacon and egg pie, but with cream, and is a perfectly acceptable reheated breakfast foodstuff or camping companion. These are eggy pies for people who don’t have the patience to make their own pastry or base, thank heaven and all things good and buttery for our good friends at Ernest Adams.

I don’t see the point in giving exact quantities as pie dishes tend to vary in size from petite and dainty to monstrous tubs and guesstimation is half the fun. Also, as this column continues, I like that things have become increasingly vague as I get tired of measuring things out, and I hope to see this continue.

Piggy pie

• A pie dish
• 400g flaky pastry at room temperature (or a couple of pre rolled pastry sheets, joined lovingly together in bakerly union)
• An onion
• 8 – 10 eggs
• 250 – 300g bacon, rind removed
• A couple of handfuls of grated cheese
• A tomato, sliced thinly and prettily
• NO PEAS – they have no place in this pie

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C. Sprinkle the pie plate with some flour. Roll out the pastry on a lovely clean surface (you can get awesome silicon sheets for this, baking geeks) to 3 – 5mm – you want it to be large enough that you can drape it across the pie plate and still have extra bits hanging down the sides. Do that too.

Slice your onion and bacon into thin strips and sprinkle or layer or thrown them into the pastry lined dish with a handful of cheese, making sure everything is spread out nicely. Trim the excess pastry with a sharp knife, trying to get as nice a cut edge as possible for maximum puffiness. Don’t throw out the scraps!

You can go two ways here. The good way for people like me who hate the texture of egg yolk is to whisk the eggs gently in a bowl, then tip them over the bacon and onion. The evil way is to crack the eggs directly into the pie, in such a way that they are evenly distributed, and either leave them as is or prick the yolks gently for runny bits. Arrange the tomato on top in a pleasing fashion, sprinkle over some cheese and lots of cracked pepper. Bake at 220 degrees for 15 minutes then turn the temperature down to 180 and cook for another 25 - 30 minutes, or until done – the pastry should puff up nicely and the egg in the middle should be puffy but firm if you give it a little prod. If it wiggles suspiciously when you give it a nudge it’s not done, egg’s gotta be set or it looks like ectoplasm.

Everything pie aka eggy pie

As above! But:

This time, instead of the bacon, take everything you think belongs in a pie, chop it up and before lining the tin with pastry, fill it up to make sure you have a good amount of stuff– courgette, broccoli, leeks, onions, tomatoes, one million mushrooms, spring onions, ripped up roast chicken, leftover roast veggies, leftover whatever else, ham, chunks of soft cheese, and so on. Throw all the bits into a big bowl and wipe the pie plate clean before lining it with pastry.

Whisk together 8 or 9 eggs, a couple of big splashes of milk or cream, some pepper and a handful of fresh green herbs and add it to the bowl of everything. Toss it together to make sure everything is coated. It will look like snot salad, no joke. Pour it into the pie dish, sprinkle on some cheese and add a small drizzle of a chutney of your choice or sweet chilli sauce, and cook as above. Dinner and tomorrow’s lunch, sorted.

A word about thriftiness: You have options with your pastry scraps. You can amalgamate them, roll them out and cut long strips out of them to create a pretty lattice pattern on top of the pie before putting it in the oven, like out of a nice picture book about animals who bake. Or, you can roll them out, sprinkle on grated cheese, fold it, roll it out again, and repeat the whole process, then cut them into strips, prick them with a fork and bake them in the oven on a tray = cheesy straws! Or you can make little jam tarts, being aware that hot jam is hot and hot jam can burn. Aren’t you clever.