Treacle Scones

It's the first proper cold week of November. The clocks have gone back, it's dark by five, and the kitchen has started doing the thing it does in autumn where it smells of itself again: butter, flour, something warm in the oven. These are the evenings that ask for treacle scones.

They are a Scottish thing, really. Dark with black treacle and warmed with ginger, mixed spice, a whisper of cinnamon. Halfway between a scone and a piece of gingerbread, and better than either. They belong to Halloween and Bonfire Night, to the smell of woodsmoke drifting in from someone else's garden, to the moment you come back inside with cold hands and need something to wrap them around.

They are also one of the quickest things you can bake. Half an hour from the bag of flour to the warm scone in your hand. No proving, no resting, no fuss. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract, and this one is short and friendly. Rub the butter in, stir the treacle through, pat the dough out, cut and bake. We're only making dinner, or whatever it is that happens at four in the afternoon when it's already getting dark and someone puts the kettle on.

I wrote it down in the notebook last November. "Treacle scones. Bonfire night. Salted butter, too much of it. Right food, right evening." I haven't anything to add to that.