Cherry Scones

There's a particular kind of afternoon that asks for scones. Grey light at the window, the kettle already on, nothing urgent to be doing. The sort of afternoon that arrives uninvited and is improved enormously by the smell of butter and flour and something sweet in the oven.

Cherry scones are an old-fashioned thing and I make no apology for that. The glace cherries are the point: bright, sticky, faintly artificial in the best possible way, scattered through a soft crumb that pulls apart in your hands. These are the scones of bakery windows and grandmothers' tins, the kind you remember before you remember why. There's nothing clever about them. There doesn't need to be.

The trick, if there is one, is to handle the dough as little as possible. Scones don't want to be kneaded into submission. They want a quick, light hand, a hot oven, and to be eaten the day they're baked, still warm enough to melt a knob of butter into the split. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract, but on this one I'd say: be gentle, be quick, don't twist the cutter. Everything else is forgiving.

I wrote it down in the notebook once. Rainy Wednesday. Cherry scones. Second pot of tea. That was the whole entry. Some afternoons don't ask for more than that.