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| Photo by Steve Shanahan |
If you aren’t part of my Aunt Maw Maw’s extended circle of
friends, or a pal of my many cousins, or belong to the Life Activities Club of
Geelong, then you might not have tried Aunt Maw’s date scones. She is a legend
in that wide circle, and her date scones are her pièce de résistance.
She’s one of those cooks that hail from the Margaret Fulton
and Australian Women’s Weekly era of baking, with a consuming belief that
eating cakes, biscuits and slices, with a nice cup of tea at the kitchen table,
can make the world right. Her baking
skills are widely known, with classic jam tarts, lamingtons and lemon slices
the order of the day.
Although tiny in stature, Aunt Maw Maw’s convictions and
generosity are larger than life. She has a strong belief in the good of
everyone, and conversations always start with a joke. In all the years of
knowing her, I can’t ever remember her having a cross word with or about
anyone. If you’re looking for something that sums up what she is truly,
uniquely like, you don’t need to look past her role in the Life Activities Club
as chief Hugger. She hugged everybody.
Her repertoire of recipes has grown with her years of
involvement in charity shops around Geelong. It was a reflection of her
generosity, her capacity to hug and perhaps, the quality of her date scones,
that made it a sad privilege to be part of the standing-room-only crowd at her
funeral recently.
When Uncle Harold went searching later for her recipe for
the date scones, he found it tucked into a copy of the Australian Women’s Weekly
cookbook, covered in flour, food stains and dog-eared. No prizes for guessing this
was the right one.
Well, Aunty Maw, I only hope you forgive me for the height
of my scones. They will never be like yours.
Preheat the oven to 230C.
2 cups of self raising flour
½ tspn salt
60g butter
¼ cup sugar
¾ finely chopped dates
1 egg
½ cup milk, approximately
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl, rub in the butter until
the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the dates and sugar. Beat the
egg and add to the dry ingredients with sufficient milk to make a soft dough.
Place on a floured surface and knead lightly.
Pat out to approximately ½ inch thickness and cut into
squares with a knife.
Place into a greased 28 x 18 centimetre lamington tin butted
together closely. Glaze the tops with milk. Bake in a very hot oven for
approximately 12 to 15 minutes. Makes about 12 scones.
This was Maw Maw’s recipe, but I used a food processor to
rub in the butter and added the dates, sugar, eggs and milk until it was mixed
to a dough ball. I then tipped it out onto a floured surface and followed the
instructions in the recipe.
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