Baking morning tea for Lois Daish using one of her own recipes sounds like a challenge round in The Great New Zealand Bake Off (which doesn’t exist, but it should and it needs to be hosted by Jaquie Brown and feature Lois Daish and Dean Brettschneider as the baking pros; I’ve clearly given this some thought before!). Rather than top-quality reality television, this is actually how I spent last Sunday morning, baking blueberry and yoghurt scones to take around to Lois’ place for morning tea.

I am very lucky to have met Lois through her daughter, Mary, a talented architect (and lovely friend of mine) who designed the fit-out for Little, a cafe which I set-up and now manage in Lower Hutt. Lois has been out to visit me at Little a number of times and we have become friends. We spent a very nice time together on Sunday morning eating scones, drinking expertly-made Supreme coffee from her little Rocket espresso machine and talking about recipes, books and her restaurants. I can’t think of a better way to spend a rainy Sunday morning.

Blueberry & yoghurt scones (Lois’ recipe as published in A Treasury of New Zealand Baking, ed. Lauraine Jacobs, 2009)

2 cups plain flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

3 tablespoons caster sugar

80g butter, cubed

1 cup of blueberries (fresh or frozen)

1/4 cup natural yoghurt

3/4 cup full-cream milk, more if needed

milk and sugar for the topping

Preheat oven to 200°c and cover a flat tray with baking paper. Using a food processor or stand mixer, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar and butter together until the mixture resembles bread crumbs – it’s fine if there are flakes of butter visible. Tip into a large mixing bowl and stir through the blueberries.

Put the yoghurt in a small bowl, add the milk and whisk together. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients and use a knife to mix into a soft, slightly sticky dough. Add more milk if needed.

Lightly flour a bench and tip out the dough. Pat into log about 2-3 cm thick and cut into 9 pieces. Pop the scones onto the prepared tray, brush with milk, sprinkle with sugar and bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm with butter.