• 130g cold butter, cut into cubes
• 420ml double cream, plus a little more for brushing on scones
• 1 large egg
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6.
Flour a 23cm cake tin and line a baking sheet with baking parchment.
Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and half a teaspoon of salt. Add the butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture is crumbly with little pea-sized bits of flour-coated butter.
Lightly beat the cream and egg together in a small jug. Make a well in the centre of the flour and gradually add the cream, mixing it in with a butter knife.
Mix just until everything comes together – don’t over mix. The dough will be quite sticky.
Put this into the floured cake tin and carefully pat the dough evenly into place. Turn the dough out on to a lightly floured surface and cut the round into eight equal wedges.
Put these on the baking sheet. Brush with the extra double cream.
Transfer to the oven and cook for about 30 minutes. The scones should be golden brown. Leave to cool for five minutes then serve warm.
These are actually still good two days later (well, not quite as good, but they don’t deteriorate the way other scones do – just keep them in an airtight container).
http://bit.ly/29e9CjD
Perfect Strawberry Jam
Makes 4 x 200ml jars
INGREDIENTS
2kg small ripe strawberries
1.7kg jam sugar
Juice of 2 lemons
METHOD
1. Hull the strawberries and discard any rotten ones. Set aside about 10 of the smallest berries, and then mash the rest up into a rough pulp. Put into a wide, thick-bottomed pan, add the sugar and the lemon juice, and bring to the boil. Add the remaining strawberries to the pan, and put a saucer in the freezer.
2. Boil the jam for about 15 minutes, stirring regularly checking the setting point every minute or so during the last 5 minutes. To do this, take the cold saucer out of the freezer, put a little jam on it, and put it back in to cool for a minute. If it wrinkles when you push it with your finger, then it's done. Strawberry jam is unlikely to set very solid though, so don't expect the same results as you would with a marmalade.
3. Take off the heat and skim off the pink scum. Pour into sterilised jars and cover with a disc of waxed paper, seal and store.
http://bit.ly/29hFkCg
Coming on the 19th of August …
Noah’s story - Preview
One
Noah Abramovich
“Boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats,
and women must not expect miracles.”
- Little Women, 1869
Tasha Evanoff! Blonde, blue eyes, plump mouth, and skin so white, it is almost blue, until summer comes, then, it turns wheat-gold.
What the fuck is she doing at the door of my office.
For a fraction of a second I actually think I must be dreaming. How can I not be? In that frozen instant I hear babushka’s throaty old voice again.
‘Listen carefully to me, Noah. The moment a newborn baby emerges into the harsh light of this world it loses its magic. It adjusts and plays the game of life, but the powerful desire for the return of its magic never goes away. The urge sits beyond the reach of memory and waits, because sometimes if a man is very, very lucky his magic will cross paths with him again.’
Tasha Evanoff is my magic.
Not a living soul knows this, but I have secretly lusted after her for years. I forced my eyes not to follow around her father’s magnificent living rooms, or stare at her beautiful bikini-clad body lying on the sun lounger by the pool because I knew our worlds were never meant to collide.
Today she has wandered unbidden into mine.
Closing the door she leans seductively against it her sexual energy radiating across the room. She is dressed exactly the way I expect the daughter of an obscenely rich and corrupt man to dress. A flawlessly cut, knee-length white dress teamed with a soft-pink cardigan, and low heeled, round-toed, immaculately white pumps. Her only adornments are a subtle string of dusky white pearls grazing her throat and velvet black clips holding her shining curtain of shoulder-length hair back from her face.
The intention behind her choice of attire is obviously not erotic. Virginal even, but the sexual tension coming from her fizzes between us like a bottle of shaken champagne. It puts my nerves on high alert.
I stand.
‘Hello, Noah,’ she drawls. Her father is a Russian bastard, but her mother comes from British blue-blood stock and her accent is pure upper class.
‘Why are you here, Tasha?’ I ask. My body is taut and hormones are buzzing all over the place, but my voice comes out flat and devoid of all expression.
‘Surely, you’re going to allow me to sit first,’ she says with a hint of irritation.
‘Of course,’ I say, waving towards the chairs opposite my desk.