Dropped scones

I don’t ever remember my mum making drop or dropped scones, and yet I found a recipe in her handwriting on the floor in my writing room. My writing room is tiny, about 6×8 foot if you’re being generous and as an untidy person and as a virtual hoarder it is very much like a junk shop/jumble sale, so to find something unexpectedly on the floor isn’t unusual and isn’t supernatural. The first time I ever had drop scones was when we went to visit relatives in Sheffield and my aunty had made some. I was amazed at their texture, they were sort of flappy, and yet they tasted delicious. My aunty was Scottish so she called them Scotch pancakes. I must have made some at some time because I do like them, but I can’t remember doing so and if I did it would have been a recipe from a book not my mum’s – because I didn’t know she had it an as I say I don’t recall her ever making them.

Here is her recipe, as she wrote it:

Dropped scones

½ flour
1 tsp bicarb
1½ tsp cream of tartar
pinch salt
2 tbsp castor or 1 syrup & 1 sugar
milk
1 egg

sieve ingred. into basin, make well in centre & drop in egg & a little milk
stir with back of wooden spoon & add enough milk to make thick batter
grease hot girdle & drop mixture in small rounds
when the surface rises in bubbles turn the scones over with knife & brown other side
cool on a clean towel

She must have jotted these down from someone telling her, because of the ‘ingred.’ and the use of ‘&’. I wonder how the syrup would have mixed in with the other ingredients, especially by using the back of the wooden spoon. She mentions a girdle (alternative for griddle) and I don’t think we had one at home, I certainly can’t remember it or her cooking on it, she would have used a frying pan. Instead of a spatula or a slice, she used a knife – it would have been a bone handled one with a rounded end – I have them in my kitchen drawer now!

Maybe I should make some tomorrow. My featured image is of some Welsh cakes I made, not of course anything like Scotch pancakes!

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