Now that I think about it, it was this great scone I had in a coffee shop about a year ago that kicked it off: a quest spanning several months to find a really good, reliable fruit scone recipe on the internet. After a few decent but unremarkable batches, I finally tried out this one by Mary Berry. I did make a little modification, replacing the sultanas with the same weight of mixed fruit, including cherries, raisins, sultanas and mixed peel. The resulting scones were fully legit; soft, sweet and with a slight crunchy outside crust. Finally, the recipe I'd been looking for. I've made a ton of these since, usually making a big batch so I can use up a full 1 litre bottle of buttermilk and freezing most of them, and they freeze pretty well too.
Though I did also found a good recipe for using up a lot of excess buttermilk if you've got it hanging around afterwards. What you see above is a buttermilk pudding. A traditional South African desert, apparently, I found a recipe for it here. As it says on the site, the measurements are a bit strange, but the pudding is quite good. It's not too far off from a sponge cake in terms of texture and flavour, though it's a little denser. I found it significantly easier to make than sponge cake though, which has always turned out gritty and flat any time I've attempted it. The pudding above I threw a bunch of leftover lemon syrup over while it was hot , giving it a nice lemony flavour too.
