Cheese Scones

Amidst a month of wedding-related logistics, running out of ideas, busy work hours and a two week holiday spent at home, I have not been updating this blog. Now that most of that is out of the way I can get around to publishing again, with a fresh batch of ideas.

So we start with something that is quintessentially British. Scones are something that I encountered when I was younger and travelling with my family. I think I was in Somerset when I had it with clotted cream and tea. In more recent times I've found myself in places like the Muffin Man in London and the famous Orchard Tea Gardens in Cambridge, enjoying this simple pleasure.

The recipe on BBC's food website lists just five ingredients: self-raising flour, salt, milk, caster sugar and butter. It turns out though that the Sainsbury's Basics pancake batter mix contains the first three ingredients in one convenient packet, so I cannot resist the temptation to use this as a shortcut. Since I'm hungry and have nothing in the fridge for dinner since I've just returned, I'll add cheese to the scones.

I really should have spotted the Sainsbury's Basics Grated Hard Cheese when starting this blog, as the unit cost price of this is lower than even the Sainsbury's Basics Mild Cheddar blocks. It's in pretty convenient form too where an even layer of cheese is required.

Because some of our ingredients are already premixed, I'm going to have to adapt some bits of the BBC recipe to suit our ends. Which makes things straightforward. Simply put, rub 25g of Basics butter into one packet the batter mix, add 3 teaspoons of sugar, then pour in 75ml water and work into a soft dough.


Proceed to customise to taste.


Bake at 220 degrees C for 15 minutes, and dinner will be ready.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Grated Hard Cheese	£1.96	500g	+£2.53	Better tasting cheese

Cider Yoghurt Cake

Yoghurt cake is apparently a very British thing, with some web sites noting that they are quite prevalent amongst British-run chalets. Essentially it substitutes yoghurt and oil for milk and butter in a cake, with the other main components of flour, sugar and eggs kept. The recipes available on the Internet are all very simple to follow, and effectively give ingredient quantities in ratios.

I was first introduced to it a few years ago by a friend of mine, who made it for our Bible fellowship group. More recently I've had grown tired of eating yoghurt and mixed fruit for breakfast, and considered this to be a quick way to rid myself of those things. Today's post however is a complete failure, largely because I have forgotten to include eggs, the most basic of ingredients in a cake. What I wound up with instead seemed to resemble some sort of hard scone. Either way, this is not going to stop me from blogging about the experience.

The point of this blog after all is more to introduce you to the Basics food range than it is for me to display my cooking proficiency after all. So we start off with the self-raising flour, which would be needed in most cake recipes. I did not notice too much problems with the self-raising flour, although the resulting cake did not rise as much as I thought it would. This may either be due to my accidental exclusion of eggs (refer to further comment at the end of the blog), or the possibility that the flour does not contain enough yeast.


I had wanted to add a bit of an interesting twist to the cake, so I decided to use cider. Not too long ago Sainsbury's was mired in a bit of controversy involving their Basics cider. In addition to being sold in 2 litre bottles, they were also sold in cans, with each can costing 34p. Naturally, they were a cheap source of alcohol, and took a lot of heat for aggravating the UK's problem with drink. The cans were hence taken off, and as a result, I would have to work out how to dispose of the rest of the cider. Do not bother buying this, it is almost indistinguishable from water.

We don't wish to have all that cider sloshing around in our cake mix, so start by bringing 300-500 ml of cider to the boil, aiming to reduce it by two-thirds.

Meanwhile, put your yoghurt into a bowl.

Add 3 parts flour....

... 1 part oil...
... and 2 parts sugar, or in my case, 1 part honey. At this point, remember to add 2 eggs. Once that is done, proceed with the rest of the recipe and add your dried mixed fruit.


Given that the Basics cider tasted horrible, I hedged my bets and divided my cake mixture into two separate tins. Remember to grease them before pouring in the mix. The one on the right contains the reduced cider.

Bake at 200 degrees Celsius for about 10-15 minutes, checking that it has turned a golden brown during the specified window.



The end result was palatable. It would probably have risen up much more had I added the eggs; they're necessary to store trapped air within its protein structure for the yeast in the self-raising flour to work on, and as the oven heats up, the cake rises.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Self-raising flour	£0.43	1.5kg	+£0.32	Flour that rises better?
Cider	£1.21	2L	+£1.57 for 3L	Better tasting cider. Recommended

Cornflakes with Yoghurt

I knew somebody in my residential hall during my first year who like everybody else coming to the UK for the first time, was taken aback by the foreign currency exchange rate. During her first term, she had almost the same thing for breakfast every day, having bought a large bag of Sainsbury's Low Price Cornflakes (yes, they did not really come in boxes) and supplementing it with milk and the dried fruit I had covered in an earlier article. I had originally wanted to try making something else today, but it turns out that it would involve buying two litres of cider and later working out what to do with the cider I do not want, so this time, I will just be revisiting this experience from times gone by.

As you can see, the bag is gone, replaced by the standard box-and-bag packaging. The cornflakes are similar to the last time I sampled them, when the friend I mentioned bought them. The flakes appear to be somewhat thinner, but otherwise everything else remains the same.


Instead of milk however, I have opted to use yoghurt. I've had a look at the ingredient breakdown between this and the regular yoghurt, and find no difference whatsoever; the Basics yoghurt does not have any additional ingredients or additives other than milk.

For some reason however, the consistency seems to be a bit thinner. Ironically, that would probably suit my purpose of mixing into cereal.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Cornflakes	£0.46	500g	+£0.49	Slightly thicker flakes
Natural Yoghurt	£0.46	500g	+£0.32	Slightly thicker yoghurt, cap to ensure freshness

And now, some bonus content. I stumbled across a review of the Basics instant noodles by i-ramen.net, who reviews packets of instant noodles from around the world.



A friend of mine helped me to translate what the review was saying, and the clincher was the last line, as follows: "While at first I thought it tasted kind of crap, as you keep on eating you're eventually able to accept the taste as kind of ordinary"

Bread and Butter Pudding

It is about time that I cover yet another culinary item that is unique to the UK. Bread and butter pudding happens to feature quite prominently in British cuisine, and I suspect that is due to the ease at which you can dispose of large amounts of stale bread at a go when making it. It appears quite commonly and is thus associated with catered school lunches. The structure of this warm dessert is simple: layers of buttered bread with raisins in between, with the entire assembly lathered in custard and powdered with sugar for glazing, before being put into the oven.

Both the Basics custard and dried mixed fruit are completely new to me, although I remember that I had a hall mate in my fresher year who used the latter to supplement the Basics cornflakes that she had. The dried mixed fruit is actually more commonly used in Christmas puddings or stollen, but I've used it here instead of raisins to have a bit more variety. Overall, both items taste alright, and would be good when preparing dessert for a large number of people, where ingredient quality is not a high priority.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Basics white bread, not pictured. Like its wholewheat counterpart, it tends to disintegrate too easily, probably indicative of how dry the bread is. You are probably better off getting either the Basics wholewheat bread, which is much more durable, or a more expensive brand of white.

So start as follows: Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease your pan with butter, and slice your bread slices into triangles.

Butter your slices. If using Basics white bread, take extra care when spreading, to avoid disintegrating the bread. Once this is done, lay down the first layer of bread.

Sprinkle the layer of dried mixed fruit before laying on the second layer of bread.


Ensure that custard can is lukewarm. This is to ensure that the bread does not harden when soaking in the custard. Open custard can, and pour contents all over the bread and fruit assembly.

Leave to stand for 30 minutes. Sprinkle with sugar for the glazing, and then bake for another 30 minutes.
End result should be as below. Since it's the custard that gives most of the flavour, this recipe is mostly failsafe.

Description	Price per Unit	No. of servings	Trade-up Premium	Trade-up Benefits
Custard	£0.25 (£0.63 / kg)	396g	+£0.60 for 1 kg (+£0.22 / kg)	Possibly thicker, richer custard
Dried mixed fruit	£0.65	500g	+£0.73	Avoids using palm oil for glazing. Note: 4% less vine fruit content