Isn't this ginger bunny cute? I was very struck by him. So much so that I felt really quite cruel snapping his head off when it came time to add the ginger to the carrot, ginger and lemon soup I was making. Hilary and Richard were coming over for dinner, and that soup was the start of the meal, to be followed by a mushroom and herb tart, with garlic-roasted green beans and a salad, and finished with a blueberry cobbler. The beans and the cobbler were by far the best parts of the meal, I think, and both were adapted from recipes in Anna Thomas' book The New Vegetarian Epicure (also known, in the Penguin edition I own, as From Anna's Kitchen). The original cobbler recipe called for blackberries, which would also be good, but blueberries are one of my favourite fruits and available in abundance at the moment, so I substituted them. It is the blueberries waiting for their cobbler topping against which the bunny is leaning in the photo.

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Combine the sugar, cornflour, water and lemon juice in a large pan, and stir to dissolve the cornflour. Add the fruit, then bring the mixture to the boil over medium heat and simmer for one minute, stirring gently to avoid breaking the fruit. Remove from the heat, taste and add a little more sugar or lemon juice as necessary. Pour into a 1.7 litre casserole dish.

Combine the flour, 2 tablespoons of sugar, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Melt the butter and combine with the buttermilk, then stir the liquid into the dry mixture in three lots, stirring to combine - do not overmix. Drop spoonfuls of this sticky dough onto the top of the fruit. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the scone crust is golden. Serve warm or hot, with cream or vanilla icecream.

Serves 4-6.

17 July 2004