Baby Velvet

Two weekends ago, I went to a baby shower for our friend Mia. (Matthew went to Nashville last year with her husband Paul to co-produce his album. He described it as the best holiday of his life and returned with a Western shirt, a cowboy hat and a mustache. He'd obviously had a good time.) Anyway, for Mia's tea party shower, I made scones and customised a set of onesies (or baby-grows, as they are called here).

I made one batch of strawberry scones and one strawberry and kiwi. They were well received and two people asked me for the recipe – just the sort of reaction I like.

Strawberry Yogurt Scones

2 C flour
3 T sugar
2 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp baking soda
4 T butter, cold, cut into ½ cubes
¾ C chopped strawberries
¾ C plain yogurt

Preheat oven to 425F/220C. Stir together dry ingredients. With a pastry cutter or two knives (or, if you can’t quite coordinate two knives, a potato masher) cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in strawberries. Stir in enough yogurt to form dough into a ball (up to ¾ C, but I used less). Turn dough onto a floured surface and with floured hands knead a few times. Press into a 9 inch round, cut into 8 triangles. Place onto cookie sheet lined with parchment. Bake until golden, about 12 - 15 minutes. Remove to rack to cool.

Note: For the strawberry-kiwi scones, I used just under a half cup of each fruit and added an additional tablespoon of sugar. The dough is very sticky and was hard to deal with when I used all the yogurt; it was much easier when drier.

The onesies elicited oohs and ahhs, especially the one with Paul’s album cover. That one was Matthew’s idea and it was genuinely adorable. The images on the shirts were straighter than it looks in the photos, by the way.

Mia looked like she was ready to pop the day of the shower, but she didn’t actually have the baby until last week. She is a very pretty little girl named…Velvet Giselle. Well, they are rock-n-rollers.