Maple syrup and rolled oat scones

This past week end was an Ikea week end. Ikea is like a black hole, everything you do on an Ikea weekend, before or after, somehow revolves around your trip there, gets sucked into it. First comes the idea: should we take a quick trip to Ikea to look at xyz (replace xyz with any Swedish name)? Come on, even while you are saying it, you know no trip to Ikea is a quick one. Whether you think you will just glance around or go exactly to aisle number 3 to pick up that one box, forget it. They will be out of that product or you will get distracted on the way there by those cute new blue-and-white striped napkins. Or you will suddenly need the four adorable colored bowls that cost only €3. If that doesn't happen, you will end up in the restaurant eating kottbullar (yup, the meatballs) or drinking a cup of coffee and nibbling on one of those flourescent green cilinders dipped in chocolate. And if you don't go to the restaurant, be sure you will end up driving home with some gravad lax or a bag of frozen pyttipanna from the store, which you will eat for dinner or lunch the next day (and a few dozens of candles and lotsa lightbulbs, because if you buy a lamp there you are doomed).

If you have kids, don't even get me started. Sometimes you go there just because you don't have a sitter. You park in the family parking space right next to the entrance. Your kid gets a ladybug sticker with her name on it, a number stamped on her hand (and you do too) and off she goes to play in the enchanted forest of Smaland, where nice people play and draw with her for free while you roam the floors, look at all the Billy bookshelves filled with fake Swedish books, your other kid or dog happily seated in trolleys made just for them. While you speak to the nice man with the yellow and blue Ikea shirt your child plays with those multifunctional columns strategically placed among the furniture. You end up buying a a stuffed rat or elk and a 7-pack of bibs while your child goes through the hole and down the slide in the kiddie section, which is strategically placed next to the cafeteria. The only way to lure them away is by promising them the full, organic lunch for €2. And then, while you sip your coffee, Daddy takes the little one to the bathroom because there are changing tables and tiny toilets and sinks in the men's room too.

When you get home you think you left Ikea at the turnpike, but no, it has followed you albeit without the pleasant smell of aromatic candles and the helpful salespeople (where are they when you need them?). The boxes seem to have multiplied in your trunk on the drive, those big blue bags are all over the place. The Kritter bed you thought would take five minutes to build has four different kinds of screws (x11) and you only realized you inverted the parts of the Stefan chair when you are about to put in that last screw. You marriage is at risk by evening and when you calm down enough to understand it is that darn instruction manual's fault, you are too exhausted to have make-up sex. Days later you will still find allen spanners strewn across the apartment, a sweet reminder that Ikea is just at an arm's reach if you need it.

Scones are a bit like Ikea, they make you feel cozy and pampered. You can be in Turkey and still feel like you are in England when you bite into one, just like Ikea makes you feel like you are in the organized, environmentally aware Sweden even if you are in Rome.

When Smitten Kitchen posted these last week, I knew my time to try making scones had finally come. Oatmeal, check. Maple syrup, check. Yup, I had almost everything I needed, and Deb kindly responded to my enquiry of what to substitute the 1/4 cup of wholewheat flour I didn't have with, regular flour or oats? I was set to go. They turned out just right, not too sweet, with a strong enough but not overpowering aroma of maple syrup. Since they are best when made the same day you intend to consume them, I prepared them and left them unbaked in the fridge the evening before and baked them the next morning. They were perfect. I then froze the baked ones and reheated them the morning after that and they were still just as good. My only note: the recipe suggested baking for 20-25 minutes. When they had been in for 18 minutes I realized they were turning dark and took them out just before the bottoms would have started burning. So keep an eye on them while they are in the oven. I made some maple butter to eat with them by beating a little maple syrup into softened unsalted butter, but if you have clotted cream on hand by all means indulge.

Elia's honey cookies

Sometimes in life you need simple things. Things that just make you feel comfortable, at home. If the known, the predictable, the ordinary did not exist, the highs, the peaks wouldn't be quite as interesting, would they? This applies to emotions but it also applies to the more simple things in life, like food. After gorging on Everything Cookies on a great sugar high on vacation, I feel the need to nibble on something a bit plainer, if you know what I mean. 

I loved every chocolate chip, every morsel of pecan, every raisin and dried cranberry I had in New York. I pressed each and every last buttery crumb onto my index finger and brought them to my lips, savoring the final hint of salty and sweet on my tongue. But now I am satiated and I want to rediscover the taste of home, the familiarity of honey and butter, the same gestures repeated time and time again. The routine of a less eventful yet just as satisfying day.

I need the sweet simplicity of honey cookies.

These are beautifully soft, chewy yet crumbly cookies. The are great savored on their own, but sublime with a cup of tea or a big glass of milk. They are quick to assemble and even quicker to bake. You can pretty much make them any shape and they are big and fat and satisfying. We usually braid ours or make them ring shaped. Your children will have fun helping you invent new shapes. So what are you waiting for?

I call these morsels of goodness Elia's cookies because the colleague and friend N who passed on the recipe: a) is Elia's aunt; b) got the recipe from her mother. Still not clear? Ok, N's brother (Elia's father) is an apiculturist. He makes a wonderful, organic honey from bees he raises in the countryside surrounding Milan (if you live in Milan, you should try it. No chemicals used in the process, local...). His son is called Elia, thus "Il miele di Elia" (Elia's honey). N's mother bakes the cookies using this honey named after her grandson, and so do I. Thus, Elia's honey cookies.