LIFESTYLE & ARTS
19 ARTS NEWS
Kirsty Wark and Anne Mulhearn enjoy some freshly baked scones, the recipe for which features in the new book by the founder of The Willow Tea Rooms.
I join Mulhern in Kirsty Wark’s kitchen at her home in the west end of Glasgow while the broadcaster is putting the final touches to a batch of her cheese and chive scones, before returning to London for a week of presenting Newsnight on BBC 2.
She made this traditional treat for the BBC’s 2013 Great Comic Relief Bake Off and they are featured in the book.
Her top scone secret is to use cheese. “It’s good to use some grated, some cubed, so the scone becomes more like a savoury brownie,” says Wark, well-known as a foodie who was also a finalist on Celebrity MasterChef.
“And it’s best to use a really good quality cheddar like Barwheys because it makes a massive difference to the flavour.”
As she and Mulhern, friends for more than 25 years, pose for the camera, the conversation soon turns to why home baking has come back into fashion.
“It’s such a Scottish tradition, and the Great British Bake Off has had a huge impact,” says Mulhern. “We find that customers are much more knowledgeable now. They recognise what’s in the cake cabinet more readily and know what they want.
“But tradition doesn’t have to mean old-fashioned. It can be very modern. Seumas’ chocolate cake is so easy, and Giovanna’s polenta cake is bang on-trend.”
Wark agrees. “I wanted to contribute to Anne’s book firstly because it’s important to emphasise she was the first to recognise the significance of Charles Rennie Mackintosh to the city; Anne was at the vanguard of the big Charles Rennie Mackintosh revival.
“Also, though, because I believe British Bake-Off and its like to redress the gender balance – it is perhaps because it is rooted in the fact that the grand Tea Rooms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries provided an alternative to male-dominated pubs and inns.
Acknowledging this important female market Kate Cranston, whose uncle founded the Waverley Temperance Hotels in Edinburgh and helped his niece establish her four Glasgow tea rooms – put increasing emphasis on the interior design of her establishments, recognising this was an important point of difference in what even then was a competitive marketplace.
“It was she who was responsible for nurturing the extraordinary genius of Mackintosh, a talent of global significance,” writes Mulhern.
On top of that, Glasgow has always had an affinity with tea, not least because some of the finest tea clippers were built on the Clyde and that the city was the birthplace of Thomas Lipton, one of the most successful tea exporters and importers.
All the more reason to celebrate Anne Mulhern’s enduring success, and raise a cup to the second career she wouldn’t give up for all the tea in China.