The nostalgia of baking

I should think that most people have a fond nostalgia for baking, usually family baking; the scent of fresh baking wafting through the house, or stopping you in your tracks as you enter the front door; the smell of fresh bread, sponge cakes, crisp shortbread, fresh scones, rich dark fruit cake...........
One of my fondest memories of my granny was her scones - small, floury and as light as air, baked in her range in the front room of her cottage; served with butter and bramble jelly or lemon curd, or a dollop of rhubarb and ginger jam. Brought up in Galloway, childhood memeries abound - drop scones straight off the girdle; Black Bun and shortbread at New Year;clootie cumpling; floury rolls and breads; Selkirk bannocks; Dundee cake;sticky gingerbread; scones of all types, my favourite being treacle.:)
This monring I wallowed in a little baking nostalgia, and made drop scones, ginger shortbread and two Dundee cakes.

One of the very best books on Scottish cookery is "Recipes from Scotland" by F.Marian McNeill; mine is priced on the front cover as 8s 6d.













Every aspect of Scottish cookery is covered, including a good selection of regional dishes. Who coudl resist dishes with anmes such as Urney pudding,Gillie's venison, partan bree,sillocks, sowans,Hattit Kit, kail bros eand crappit heids?
I quote here from the Scottish Educational Journal:
"I cannot imagine that there can be a single Scottish bosom in which its recipes will not stir a nostalgic pang. "