Perhaps the most common food-myth is that black pepper goes with everyhing - and everyone likes black pepper.

Good black pepper is precious and more is most often not 'better' - in fact, quite the opposite - a light grinding of black pepper at the table, often delivers the most flavour.

However, we often forget to consider black pepper in sweet dishes - especially spiced sweet dishes, and black pepper loves strawberries and most stone fruits.

Look at most of the spice blends around the world, and its likely that there's black pepper in there somewhere.

Black pepper energises Chai Tea spice... and it livens up Christmas mince pies, Christmas pudding, fruit cake, gluh wine and a little grinding of black pepper adds an element of interest to brandied cream.

Perhaps the best 'Black Pepper' surprise we discovered over the Summer was a light greek Yoghurt panna cotta, served with nectarines griddled with a grinding black pepper and a generous drizzle of honey... Garnish with chopped pistachios
We particularly loved Helena Moursellas's recipe in Delicious!

Our English cousins call them scones, our American cousins call them 'biscuits'... Either way, they're super easy to make, and oh so satifsying to eat.

Our English cousins are infinitely patient - they gather up the dough, roll it out and cut out beautiful rounds... We bake them in the giant muffin pans (heresy to still call them scones, I know!).

Our American cousins serve them with a rich stew (with lots of gravy!), and we regard them more as a 'tea-time' treat to enjoy with strawberry compote and Marscapone spiked with Parmesan and black pepper...

Ingredients

3 cups of plain (or self raising) cake flour
½ tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder for plain flour; 1 tsp baking powder for self raising flour
230g butter (cold!)
1 cup coarsely grated Pecorino cheese (with a little extra for topping)
3 tsp freshly ground black pepper (with a little extra for topping)
1 cup cold milk

Preheat your oven to 220℃.

Grease 2 trays of giant muffin pans (you'll need space for 12 scones/biscuits)

Whisk together flour, baking powder, black pepper and salt an a large bowl. (Aim is to mix the dry ingredients well and aerate the flour.)

Chop the cold butter into roughly 5mm cubes; then use a fork to cut the butter into the flour. The mixture should be coarsely lumpy.

Stir in the grated cheese with a fork and pour in the milk. If your flour is very dry, add a litle extra milk. Stir with the fork until the dough is roughly combined. The idea is to work quickly, handle the dough as little as possible (esp if you have hot hands!) - this is typically a lumpy, bumpy dough.

Spoon the dough into the muffin pans - try and make them all more or less the same size.

Sprinkle the tops with extra cheese and a grinding of black pepper and bake for 10-12 minutes until golden.

Remove from oven and let them cool in the pans for about 5 minutes; turn out onto a cooling rack for another few minutes.

They're at their best if served while still slightly warm!