The tantrums will continue until morale improves

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Moss and leaves

We had reached the stage in the recipe of adding the eggs. “Let’s put the eggs in!” I said, and took the container out of the fridge. The instant I turned to get a whisk, there was an smashing noise behind me. I spun around to see egg all over the floor, and Frances giving me a keenly helpful look, as if to say “yep, done that! What’s next?”.

When Edward was little we built a stool so that he could stand up safely and do things with us at the kitchen bench. I always enjoyed baking with him. It was usually quite messy – the urge to fling just a little bit of flour around is fairly irresistible – but my memory is that he always concentrated very hard on my instructions and tried to copy what I was doing. (Having said that, I am somewhat wary of trusting my memory when it leans towards a “first child was so easy, second child is a devil” narrative, which I suspect has much more to do with the mellowing effects of time than reality.)

The vagaries of memory aside, baking with Frances is definitely different to how it was with Edward. I don’t recall entering into a physical tug-of-war with Edward for possession of the mixing bowl while he howled “MIIIIINE”, for example. I’m sure this is exacerbated by the intensely independent stage Frances is going through at the moment, flying into little rages when you try to do outrageous things like things like take the bowl of brownie mixture back because she’s about to slop it all over the floor, or prevent her from climbing onto a ladder, or stop her from wading into deep water at the pool and drowning herself.

Edward was given Christmas cards containing candy canes from many of his classmates at kindy at the end of the year. It’s a tradition I didn’t participate in for several reasons, such as 1) I didn’t have bloody time, and 2) I think the interest that five year olds have in receiving a Christmas card is extremely minimal. I do feel a tiny bit miserly about this decision though, and hope that all the parents who make the effort to prepare those little gift exchanges are doing so because they thoroughly enjoy it.

The kindy candy canes were hung on our little Christmas tree, and every day Frances would gaze at them and ask hopefully “tanty tane?”. They are such an enticing colour, and she’s a fiend for anything sweet. Christmas Day arrived, and Frances discovered a candy cane in her stocking which yes! She was allowed to eat, much to her sticky delight. On Boxing Day she bustled towards the tree, said “tanty tane!” and was informed that candy canes for breakfast were a once a year event. I did my best not to laugh at the absolute stunned horror and disappointment on her face, which she followed up with an elaborate performance of lying on the floor giving great noisy howls of sadness. Once soothed, she still choked out the occasionally broken “tanty… tane…”, just to make us aware how cruelly we had hurt her. I find it much easier to briskly ignore toddler tantrums the second time around, which perhaps also contributes to an increased number of them. I know that’s not the received wisdom regarding tantrums, but I expect Frances is an advanced case, a tantrum genius, working diligently on pitching those screams just right until she gets the desired reaction.

Reading Round-Up for 2017

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Here’s my Goodreads year with covers and links to my “reviews” (I have become worse at reviewing books every year, and occasionally it’s just something like, “excellent read”, useless for both anyone looking at the reviews, and me looking back in future years with no memory of that particular novel).

My goal was to read 60 books, and I read 75 – this increase is due to my return to work after maternity leave. The plus-side to my long trip to work is having time to read on the bus, and listen to audiobooks while driving.

Wonderfully interesting statistics!

  1. My reading this year was 40% fantasy and science-fiction – a fairly steady percentage maintained in recent years, I think.
  2. Romance as a genre was 16% of my reading, which has dropped since 2015, because I didn’t have a co-worker making me read a terrible and long series of erotic novels.
  3. I read one entire series of 7 books this year – the Expanse series by James SA Corey. I read the first, Leviathan Wakes, in January, and the most recent, Persepolis Rising, in December, the month it was released. It’s a completely addictive, high-stakes sci-fi series, and my enjoyment of it was only enhanced by also watching the first two seasons of the TV show. I had a very Expanse-centric year.
  4. My average rating was 3.3 stars out of 5. Unacceptably low! I need more 5 star reads next year.

Best childhood flashback

I loved Susan Cooper’s classic Dark is Rising sequence when I was younger – it’s a series of fantasy novels inspired heavily by British mythology, beautifully written and with the most wonderful solemn portentous feeling. The Dark is Rising is the second in the series, but is a fine place to start, and takes place over the Christmas period – so is an excellent seasonal read (although more appropriate if one is in the Northern Hemisphere, I imagine).

Best Chalet School book

Since 2008 I have been making sporadic attempts to read the entire Chalet School book series – the books of the series that I read as a child were some of my favourites, but the entire series is immense, spanning some 60-odd books. In 2017, I read another 6 of them, making my way up to around book 55. I’m going to stop there – the quality is certainly declining, as you would expect, and the quirks and repetitions of Brent-Dyer’s authorial style become wearying rather than charming. The best of the lot I read in 2017 was Jane of the Chalet School, which was unexpectedly fresh and enjoyable. This is a rather pointless recommendation because obviously you shouldn’t read Jane of the Chalet School unless you’ve read at least some of the earlier and far superior books in the series.

Best historical romance

You know when you feel in the mood for a book that’s going to make you feel uplifted and merry and filled with a wonderful and probably entirely unjustified warmth towards your fellow human beings? The book you want is one of Rose Lerner’s historical romances, which are all so sweet and cheerful (without being shallow or saccharine). My favourite of hers is Listen to the Moon.

Best fairytale adaption

T Kingfisher’s (aka Ursula Vernon’s) The Seventh Bride has the most delightful narrator’s voice – sensible and good-humoured and charming. If you find yourself in an adaption of a Bluebeard-style story, I imagine that being good-humoured and sensible probably give you a better chance of survival.

Best novel about communal living

I am always down for novels about all sorts of communal living – kibbutzes, communes, terrible Amish romances (did you know that was a thing? It’s a thing), dystopian novels where everyone lives in a compound, that sort of thing. Kevin Wilson’s A Perfect Little World is a lovely book about a scientific experiment in which ten couples raise their children communally, and the various ramifications of that experiment. One of the things I particularly liked was the main character, Izzy, who is a very young mother, and how we see her grow into motherhood. It’s a very moving, thoughtful novel.

Best novel about animation (yes, these categories are very arbitrary) 

Kayla Rae Whitaker’s The Animators was an amazing rollercoaster of a novel, about two animators working together on very personal projects. There was so much in this book about friendship and the creative process, and it is both immensely funny and heart-breaking – a brilliant piece of work.

Ceiling of stars

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Bruce

I make sporadic unsuccessful attempts to encourage my son to sleep in his own bed, because I have hitherto undiscovered reserves of mad optimism. My previous effort involved the pet fish he asked for on his last birthday. We put them in a tank in his bedroom, and I gave a long and heartfelt speech about what wonderful company fish were when one happened to wake up in the night. How lovely that he now had fishy friends with him in his room all the time! You’re never alone when you have a fish, I said. The first night he decided that fish were not actually very good company at all, particularly in the middle of the night, and back into our bedroom he came.

My latest idea for lulling my son to sleep by means of commercialism is a turtle with a fluffy head and flippers that shines stars onto the ceiling through its shell. It is quite as ridiculous as it sounds. Apparently some of the stars are Real Constellations, so it’s not only soothing but Educational. I presented him with the turtle and started on my hard sell – this was a new special friend! Who would live in his bed! And when he woke up at night he could press the button and the lovely stars would shine! Didn’t that sound beautiful and peaceful? Maybe he would like to give his special friend a name?

He looked suitably solemn and gazed at the turtle.

“Bruce.”

Uhhh.

“His name can be Bruce.”

I managed not to laugh.

Bruce the special shining star turtle has not been a success. Of course he bloody hasn’t, I don’t know what I was thinking. He has actually become part of the bedtime routine, just in the opposite way to which I had hoped. Bruce lives in the Big Bed now, and must be ceremoniously turned on each night, shining his soothing stars onto the ceiling so that my son and whichever adult is lying down with him can enjoy an Educational display of constellations. Instead of removing a small child from my bed, I’ve added a shining turtle. It’s not an improvement. Bloody Bruce.

Traffic controller

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Berries

The traffic controller is sprawled on the front seat of his ute, one leg hanging out the open door. He’s texting on his phone while the line of cars crawls past him towards the temporary traffic light, blinking an inactive orange. I glare balefully at him. He yawns and taps at his phone again.

The closed bridge and consequent detour onto the main road are a daily tedious frustration, kilometres of extra driving for half of the year while the slowest bridge construction process in the world takes place. The temporary traffic lights were supposed to operate during peak times; instead, they’re generally turned off. The traffic controller sits in his car on the side of the road, presumably constantly poised to leap up and activate them should the intersection become too busy.

~~~~~

The traffic controller is rubbing a coin on an instant scratchie ticket. We pause right next to him, waiting for a gap in the traffic. My son is perched in his car seat, delivering a lengthy discourse on how you would install a speaker in a car; its intended audience is seemingly someone who has never heard of the concept of speakers or cars. I have heard of both, and “mmm oh yes, I see” in response as I stare at the traffic controller. I want to shout “Is it a winner, mate?” out the window.

~~~~~

The traffic controller is rolling a cigarette. Rolling cigarettes has always seemed to me to be a slightly classier way of smoking, if one is going to smoke. I think it’s the vaguely artisanal homemade aspect. Preserve some homegrown produce, bake a loaf of bread, roll a cigarette. When we return from the kindergarten and drive past him again, the traffic controller is smoking. He has propped a piece of signage against the windscreen of his car to shade him from the afternoon sun. I wonder why he doesn’t stand and smoke beside his car to spare the interior from the smell. Presumably there are some limits to the things one can do while purportedly monitoring traffic.

~~~~~

The traffic controller is closely examining his fingernails. I glance at my own fingernails on the wheel and make a mental note to cut them, which I immediately forget. If I could remember the mental notes I make while driving I think I would be a much more organised person. I hear that the bridge is almost completed, will perhaps re-open the following week. I wonder how often I am going to forget and drive straight on automatically to the detour, the habit of many months directing me while I think about the early morning fog and meetings at work and whether I’ve packed enough food for the baby. Realisation would dawn on me when I arrive at the empty intersection. The traffic controller is gone, on to better and brighter things, and I’ve gone the wrong way.

Lemon Drizzle Birthday Cake

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Lemon drizzle birthday cake

This is a bit of a mash-up of recipes for lemon drizzle cake and a Swiss buttercream icing recipe from Smitten Kitchen that makes a wonderfully decadent layered birthday cake. The cake is intensely tangy and lemony, and the icing is rich and creamy without being overly sweet (and pipes on beautifully if you’re going for more decorative icing).

This is baked in two 20cm/8 inch square tins, but the same amount of batter will make one larger tray cake in a 30 x 23cm pan – just bake for an extra 5-10 minutes, and forget the icing for more of an afternoon tea style cake.

ingredients:

for the cake –
225g (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
225g (1 cup) caster sugar
4 eggs
zest of 2 lemons
225g (1 1/2 cups) self-raising flour (or 225g plain flour plus 3tsp baking powder)

for the drizzle –
juice of 2 lemons
75g (1/3 cup) caster sugar

for filling and Swiss buttercream icing –
jar of good lemon curd
170g (3/4 cup) caster sugar
3 large egg whites
275g (approx 1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 160C/140C fan forced. Grease and line two 20cm/8 inch square tins.

Cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time until well incorporated, then add the lemon zest. With a spatula, fold in the flour. Split the mixture evenly between the two tins – it should be just over 2 cups of batter for each tin. Smooth the surface and bake for 30 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean and the edges are just coming away from the side. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes, then turn onto a cooling rack.

When you’ve put the cakes in the oven, mix together the lemon juice and sugar for the drizzle in a small bowl. Stir well a few times while the cakes are cooking. When the cakes are cooked, the sugar should have dissolved into the lemon juice.

When the cakes have cooled a little but are still warm, gradually spoon the lemon juice mixture evenly over the tops of the cakes. If the drizzle runs through the cakes, wait for them to cool a bit more before trying again. When the drizzle has been completely spooned on, leave the cakes to cool completely.

When you’re ready to fill and ice the cake, make the buttercream. Put some water into a small saucepan to simmer. Whisk the egg whites and sugar together into a big metal bowl over the saucepan of water. and place the bowl over a small saucepan of simmering water. Whisk until the sugar has completely dissolved – test by rubbing a little of the mixture between your fingers to see if you can feel sugar granules.

Using hand beaters (or having transferred the mixture to the bowl of a mixer), beat or whip until it turns white and approximately doubles in size. Add the vanilla essence. Add the butter a large chunk at a time, beating continuously as you do so. When you’ve finished adding the butter, continue beating until the icing is a thick, smooth, pipeable consistency.

Spread a thick layer of lemon curd on one of the cakes, then cover with a thick layer of buttercream. Place the other cake on top, then ice the whole cake with the remaining buttercream. If you want a precise finish, it may be easier to do a thin crumb layer, then refrigerate the cake for half an hour before covering it with a final layer of icing and any piping.

6 months

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Bee

Six months passes a lot faster with your second child. It felt like an absolute age with my first. You’re learning how to look after a baby, second-guessing everything you do, and also adjusting to the massive change to your life; the sledgehammer of parenthood. With your second, you’re too busy to dwell on time passing and so it speeds by.

Things I’m enjoying at 6 months:

  1. Frances’ constant smiles and laughter. It seemed to take her quite a while to laugh, and when she first began it was an odd, forced sound, very similar to the sound of her sobs. Now it is an easy chuckle. She is most amused by her brother, and sometimes sits there laughing at him while he’s doing something very ordinary, much to his bemusement and occasional irritation.
  2. Watching the steady progression of new skills – she has been rolling both ways for a while, and seems to be making progress towards being able to sit, although currently she still lurches and falls over a few seconds after I carefully place her in a sitting position. She is very focussed on new things she can do with her hands at the moment, and spends ages concentrating on moving a toy around, or tearing paper to shreds (I must confess until recently I let her go to town on catalogues we get in the mail, as she “plays” happily with them for so long, but then she started eating them, so I’ve discontinued that baby-entertainment method). She babbles away with consonants in random emphatic streams of sound – dadagagadamamama.
  3. Starting solids, which we did a few days before she turned six months old, as she was very interested in our food. I thought we would try more of a baby-led weaning approach this time, but Frances was very perturbed by the chunks of soft food she managed to gnaw off from larger pieces of food and immediately gagged them back up. I’ve been mashing up things with a fork instead and spoon feeding her, which she enjoys much more, and I love her fascinated/horrified expressions whenever she encounters something new.

Things I’m not enjoying at 6 months:

  1. The lack of sleep is my major complaint, but then again it usually has been with both my children, and Edward improved. So, I trust, will Frances.
  2. I am beginning to chafe slightly at my stay-at-home-parenthood lifestyle. I return to work in three months, and I think by then I’ll be really looking forward to some time on my own – oh that’s an odd thing to write, as I don’t have a whole lot of social time with other adults at the moment. But I am never without Frances – particularly at the moment, as she has been in an intensely clingy phase for the past month or so, never happy with anyone else, and I am beginning to look forward to a break from that. When I returned to work after my first maternity leave, I really enjoyed the novel feeling of only being responsible for myself in my hours away from home.
  3. In almost equal measure, I find myself worrying about my return to work and Frances going to a family daycare for four days a week; an arrangement which we are experienced with and will no doubt work perfectly well, but I dread the awful feeling of removing yourself forcibly from a crying baby and rushing out the door. It’s never a pleasant experience.
  4. Not being able to hand off the baby to anyone else without her howling – I don’t remember Edward being this excessively attached to me, and I hope it’s a short-lived stage.

Gingerbread Biscuits

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Gingerbread

These are lovely spiced slightly crunchy gingerbread biscuits, adapted from a classic recipe in The Joy of Cooking. They’re great to make with children – the dough is easy to mix up, it involves melting butter in a saucepan (a big plus according to my four year old), they can press shapes out of the dough, and then decorate the resulting biscuits.

ingredients:
1/2 cup (115g) butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup golden syrup or molasses
2 1/2 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tblsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
decorations if desired – chocolate bits, sultanas, icing, etc

method:
In a small saucepan, melt together the butter, sugar and golden syrup or molasses until the sugar is just dissolved. Remove from the heat to cool until just warm.

In a bowl, stir together 2 1/4 cups of the flour, the baking soda, salt, and spices. Make a well in the centre, and pour in the melted butter mixture. Stir vigorously to blend together. Gradually add in the remaining 1/4 cup of flour. The mixture should now be a ball of smooth dough, pulling away from the sides of the bowl.

Remove the dough from the bowl and knead it a few times, before flattening it into a thick disc and wrapping it in plastic wrap. Put it in the fridge to cool down for 20 minutes or so, so that it’s easier to roll out. You can also leave the dough in the fridge at this stage for up to four days, returning it to room temperature before you roll it out. (You could presumably also freeze it and then defrost before use, but I haven’t tried that).

Preheat the oven to 180C, and roll out the dough to around half a centimetre thick. (Yes, I did actually get out a ruler and check this, although I never manage to roll out dough evenly anyway. Mine always end up being varying thicknesses, which doesn’t seem to matter all that much). Cut out your biscuits in whatever shape you desire (and if you’re cooking with a four year old, let them artistically place chocolate bits where appropriate). Depending on the shape you’ve chosen, this amount of dough should make between two to three trays of biscuits. They don’t spread much at all, so you can place them close together.

Bake the biscuits for about 8 minutes, until they’re just starting to brown on the edges. They’ll firm up as they cool down, and they’re easy to overcook (although that just makes them extra crunchy).

When cooled, they can be decorated with icing, but it’s not necessary. They taste great plain, and keep very well in a sealed container for at least a week.

Gingerbread

Hourly

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Lemongrass

When Frances was three months old I wrote blithely that I was enjoying the fact that she was better at sleeping than her brother, and I could do magical things like put her down when she was drowsy and she would fall asleep. How sweetly innocent I was. Frances is now almost six months old and is what I would classify as “a bloody terrible sleeper”. Her brother started off awful at sleeping and gradually got better, with occasional months-long reversions. She started off quite decently, and has gradually become worse and worse. I didn’t think babies were supposed to work like that. I am quite affronted.

At the moment during the night she usually sleeps for a couple of two hour stretches (or on special occasions, longer), and then wakes up hourly the rest of the time. “Maybe you should try co-sleeping,” said a well-meaning helpful person. Ha ha, helpful person, she sleeps like that while I am co-sleeping. And I am mostly getting enough sleep. I’m functioning, I’m getting things done, I’m mostly keeping my temper with the inevitable frustrations of parenting a four-year-old. I’m still enjoying being at home with a baby. But god, I miss long stretches of sleep and sleeping in my own bed. I try not to think about how much I miss it because it makes me irritable. Like geez, is it really so hard to sleep that you have to wake up every hour to have a small comforting snack? I know you can sleep for longer because you used to.

For daytime naps I put her to sleep in a baby carrier so that she sleeps for longer. As I type this she is strapped to my front, snoozing restlessly, her warm sweaty head making my shirt damp. It was quite snuggly and pleasant wearing her in the cooler months, but the weather very swiftly changed from “barely winter” to “fuck spring, we’re moving directly to summer” and now she sleeps and sweats. I need to stop wearing her at some point before the end of the year, because she will start at a family daycare in January when I return to work. I don’t want “strange exotic napping in a cot” to be another thing for her to adjust to when she starts – but every day when I think “I should really start putting her down in the cot to nap”, I am too reluctant to lose those precious moments of productive time I get with putting her in the carrier.

The one benefit of having your second child sleep like crap is that you don’t dwell on it in the same obsessive way that you do with your first. I spent a lot of pointless hours trying to come up with reasons for why Edward slept badly and worrying that he would never improve. While I do record Frances’ sleeping patterns I don’t spend my time mentally gnawing on the problem in the same way I did with Edward. (Yes, I know I have now written several detailed paragraphs about it which may suggest that I don’t entirely let it go. This, incidentally, is why it’s hard to answer “so what have you been up to?” queries from people who aren’t currently taking care of young kids. “Oh, you know, thinking in vast and boring detail about my child’s sleeping habits and writing down how many times I get woken up each night.” They tend to smile at you in a rather fixed manner, I can’t imagine why.)

6 of the Best Newsletters

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Drying flower

I used to read almost everything online via RSS in Google Reader. I love RSS; all those websites collated neatly in the one place, easily readable on mobile. Not many other people felt the same way (or at least, only an unprofitable number of people), and as a result Google Reader died a very sad death in 2013. I replaced Google Reader with Newsblur, but the end of Reader was probably the trigger for me finding things to read in other places – often via Twitter, but also through email newsletters. Newsletters seem to have become increasingly popular over the last couple of years – partly I suppose because it gives people control over a mailing list, partly because it enables them to send their “content” (I’m using that despised term for want of a better one) directly to readers, and therefore having a better chance of capturing their attention than passively publishing on a website and trying to lure readers via links on social media.

Anyway! I am becoming increasingly fond of receiving beautifully curated and written newsletters in my email on a regular basis. My preference is for newsletters that contain a mixture of essay/personal writing and links to interesting and thought-provoking things. (Newsletters containing poetry or fiction are not my thing, although there’s plenty of those around too).

Here are a few of my favourites, all very delightful in different ways:

  1. Two Bossy Dames is a very funny and lengthy collection “cultural recommendations and commentary” sent out weekly. I’ve found so many things (music, articles, tv shows) that I’ve enjoyed via this newsletter.

    “I think any friend I’ve ever made or romantic partner I’ve ever had liked me because I’m funny. But mostly, when I hear other people compliment me (sometimes when you eavesdrop, you DO hear nice things about yourself), they don’t focus on my effervescent wit. WHY IS THAT? Noted historian & funny lady Rosa Lyster (with an assist by her equally funny Frith) explain that Anne Boleyn is both to thank & blame for this state of affairs, as she was obviously hilarious, but Henry VIII and all his male courtiers simply couldn’t conceptualize female…humor??? So they decided she was a witch. As one does! Sound logic, Tudor bros! “

  2. So Far, I’ve Had No Complaints by Caroline Crampton includes sections such as Things to Read, Things to Listen To, Things to Watch, and Compulsory Medieval Thingamabob. I love that it includes tempting excerpts of the articles it links to – I’m not into newsletters that are just a plain series of links without description.

    “I think I find old-fashioned murder mysteries so comforting because they represent the triumph of order over chaos. The side of right always prevails. Unlike in real life, logic and hard work always win in the end.”

  3. Grief Bacon by Helena Fitzgerald are irregularly delivered (which makes them a wonderful surprise) and beautifully written essays on life.

    “Love allows us to see – and be seen – in not just our raw or ugly selves, but our boring selves, the person who sits on the couch and watches television, the person who wakes up in the morning and makes coffee, the person who doesn’t have much of anything to say. We already know to praise ourselves for our rare special occasion achievements. In love, we elevate the unsightly things, the boring day-to-day, into the spectacular. Love celebrates another person’s existence rather than their achievements.”

  4. …the fuck is this by Bim Adewunmi is a sporadic mixture of thoughts and links, and always a pleasure to read.

    “It’s only August, but I feel the slipping away of summer very keenly, perhaps because I’m British.

    We are a people of a somewhat gloomier disposition, used to a somewhat… accelerated summer season. Lazy summer days are a dime a dozen in this new place, not snatched moments in the local park, half-naked and resolutely baking sun-deprived skin.”

  5. Three Weeks is appropriately delivered every three weeks, and always contains three things to read, watch, and listen to (in addition to a variety of other interesting links).

    “Hello to everyone, but warm greetings especially to the heartbroken and those in need of courage. Email can be a pretty decent place for finding what you need. Particularly if what you yearn for is some extra browser tabs and a bracing dose of Motivational Britney.”

  6. Links I would Gchat you if we were friends by Caitlin Dewey is a weekly collection of links that helpfully rounds-up the major news stories/interesting articles/Stuff Happening Online, with incisive commentary.

    7. “The hardest-working women on the Internet … are these Kate Middleton bloggers. (They’re like three parts insane workaholics and one part insane voyeurs.) There’s apparently a small army of these women, live-tweeting Middleton’s life; it’s a fascinating glimpse into the extremes of fandom and labor online.”

Scone Pizza

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Scone pizza

This is very barely adapted from Hungry and Frozen’s scone pizza recipe (I added some thinly sliced zucchini and crumbled feta to the original recipe) and is very much as it sounds; a delicious scone-like base (although significantly easier to make than scones, as it doesn’t involve rubbing butter time-consumingly into flour) with a gorgeous savoury topping. It’s also ridiculously easy – 30 minutes from your initial “hmm, what will I have for lunch” thought to pulling the pizza out of the oven.

Scone pizza, pre-baking

ingredients:
200g (2 cups) plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
25g melted butter
125g (1/2 cup) plain yoghurt
1 large tomato, sliced
1/2 zucchini, thinly sliced
your choice of cheese – I used some grated cheddar and a little crumbled feta

method:

Pre-heat your oven to 210C (190C fan-forced).

Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt, then add in the melted butter and yoghurt. Stir only enough to form together into a soft dough. You may need a little extra yoghurt to get the dough to form easily depending on how thick your yoghurt was – I needed an additional small spoonful.

On some baking paper, roll the dough out into a rough circle about 1cm thick. Pop the baking paper and dough onto a tray, and then top your pizza – I thickly layered on tomato and zucchini, then sprinkled my cheese over the top. Plenty of tomato is great, as it goes wonderfully squooshy in contrast to the base (and I’m saying that as someone who is not a fan of cooked tomato, generally).

Bake for around 20 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the base is puffed and lightly browned. Devour while hot.