I had a fairly happy childhood until it got to that point where I realised I will probably never get to taste scones. And then I lived unhappily ever after.
Enid Blyton largely turned my life upside down. In her books, people led magical, adventurous lives: doing things, solving mysteries, bringing bad people to book, but mostly packing tea or having tea. As they lolled about in their gardens, they stuffed their face with éclairs, meringues, large slices of chocolate cake, tongue sandwiches, potted meat sandwiches, warm buttered scones, egg and lettuce sandwiches, pork pies, hard-boiled eggs, jam tarts or gingerbread, and then washed it all down with lemonade or ginger beer.
It was all too much to take, but I made my peace by elimination. Eggs, tongues and meat held no excitement for me. I figured gingerbread was a medicinal bread you had if you were sick, along with haldi doodh (turmeric milk), and shortbread biscuits were just leftover bread, which was dried and broken into bits (like they do for dogs and fish). Meringue sounded like a cousin of tongue (perhaps an animal part I wasn’t aware of) and éclairs — well, Cadbury’s was doing a good job of it, and we got occasional éclairs as treats. I had no idea at the time that they could be a giant, gooey mess, like a veritable chocolate volcano.
But she had me at scones. Scones I wanted. Scones took me to warm and fuzzy places. Scones made me feel sorry for myself whenever I had my idli and molagapodi ; even when I added a dollop of butter on my warm idlis and pretended they were scones. Around that time, my mother was taking baking lessons in the after-hours of her school teacher job. Every Saturday, she would return with baked goodies: coconut cookies, nankhatais , marble cake, sponge cake, pineapple upside down cake and even chocolate cake, exactly like Fatty’s mom used to make. I asked her when they would teach her to make scones and she gave me this “How greedy are you?” look.
It was clear that scones were not going to be a part of her repertoire. We couldn’t afford cookbooks and these were the pre-Internet days, so I couldn’t look up the recipe. I blamed Enid Blyton for not having a recipe section in her books. Every time we went out to eat (which was rare), I would ask for scones and would be offered an ice cream cone. (Clearly I was even pronouncing it wrong, like ‘cones’). Scones were now the bane of my existence. Soon, youth and all the trappings of it obliterated the memory of scones. Or so I thought. Twenty years later, I was at Norwood Bungalow in Sri Lanka, writing a travel story about the Ceylon Tea Trails. The menu for the high tea read: Scones with clotted cream and strawberry compote, lemon tarts, cucumber sandwiches…
Finally. As I stared at the three-tier spread, I was awash with emotion. It was like they had packed my childhood and put it right there in front of me. I picked up a scone, like it were a jewel, and caressed it. It looked like muddy, dehydrated pav for the most part and tasted unspectacular. It wasn’t warm, like I thought it would be, but then we were in the hills, and the air outside was cold. I gingerly slit it, and spread a dollop of butter on one half and the compote on the other, smiling and crying at the same time.
When I got back to Mumbai, the first thing I did was look up the recipe. I told my son about this magical thing from my childhood that would melt in your mouth. My first attempt failed miserably; the scones were hard and un-photogenic. No amount of butter or jam could redeem them. I was despondent, but the child said we could pretend they were rock cakes. And then Cupcake Jemma (a YouTube fairy) entered my life with a really simple recipe with flour, milk, baking powder, sugar and salt. Just like that, the scones tasted exactly like my childhood.
Literary whispers
Enid Blyton’s first published book was Child Whispers . It was a book of poetry and came out in 1922. She was still working as a teacher at this point, and wrote in her spare time.
The author is a journalist, writer and blogger based in Mumbai. She has written two books — I’m Pregnant, Not Terminally Ill, You Idiot! and The Boy Who Swallowed A Nail And Other Stories
