Wild Garlic & Cheese Scones

We have always loved the idea of food for free and foraging for what you can find out and about in the hedgerows. We have gathered blackberries for crumbles and jam. Hawthorn berries for hawthorn jelly and of course sloes for warming sloe gin. This was our first try of Wild Garlic however. It is pretty ridiculous we haven’t tried it sooner as it grows in abundance within the woodlands we, quite literally, live a stone’s throw from.

So this VE day, spent in lockdown, we downed tools and ventured a little way forth into a sea of star shaped wild garlic flowers. Bright white heads bobbing above a plethora of rich green leaves. It was these leaves we gathered. A good handful each, for our recipe.

We followed a National Trust recipe for these Wild Garlic & Cheese Scones that you can find here. Just a mention though, it says for baking powder in the ingredients but we couldn’t find it mentioned in the method so we threw it in right at the beginning with the flour and salt.. it seemed to work ok!

We split the recipe in half for our scones as our youngest Miss HH is dairy intolerant and some of the ingredients would have made her poorly left as is. So, we had a bit of an experiment. They worked brilliantly and she loved them so hopefully these substitutions are of use to you if you have dairy free requirements through allergies or by choice.

In place of cow’s milk we used Unsweetened Almond Milk. We used Tesco’s own but I’m sure you could use any. I went for unsweetened as for baking savoury things I’ve previously used sweetened and it has given a rather unpleasing flavour.. so stick with unsweetened! We used Vitalite in place of butter and replaced the cheese with Violife Block, the original flavoured one that you can find here. Our Little Miss has refused every offer of a dairy free cheese until this one. We ploughed through many in the hope of finding one that meant she could enjoy pizza and the like and were met with a sad face each try until we found this one that she absolutely loves.

I’ll admit, the styled Insta-worthy flatlay photos we got as a final result made me laugh. A photo is most definitely a snapshot in time and not the entire truth of a situation! For the record the kitchen looked like a flour explosion when we had finished baking and truth be told we had approximately 30 seconds to get the pics of the perfect wild food snack on the grass in the garden before we were descended on by the Ginger Vultures – That’s our ex-commercial hens that we have in case you were wondering.. if you have any you’ll know exactly what we mean!

Another word too on the garlic, it has a delicate, mild taste. Similar too if you likened a spring onion to a large white onion. I usually steer clear of onions and garlic as while I love the flavour, they don’t love me and I usually get a very unhappy tummy after eating them. I am pleased to report Wild Garlic seemed mild enough to not leave me regretful of eating it at all so they were most definitely a win win all round!

If you give them a go do let us know what you think!