I can’t see Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, Kate Beckingsale or any of the glamour Kates/Cates as scones, or Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone or Angelina Jolie for that matter. Their cake equivalents run more to French delicacies dripping in glossy chocolate, or dazzling concoctions of meringue and gold leaf.

I can’t even see Meryl Streep, Helen Mirren or Judi Dench as scones, even pumpkin or date ones. Wild and flaming fruit puddings with lashings of brandy, maybe, or even upmarket fruit-laden flans studded with almonds. But not scones.

No, only Dame Maggie Smith can be a scone. They’re not the most beautiful or photogenic examples in their chosen fields, and it’s possible to overlook Smith or scone when someone hurls a lazy “Who’s your favourite actor/actress?” or “What’s your favourite cake/bread?” into the conversation.

But think of the best acting you’ve ever seen, or the most perfect cake/bread you’ve ever sat down to, and I go straight to the actress with the slightly bulging eyes and small but perfectly formed hot scone moments too numerous to mention, every time.

My relationships with scones and Smith are long-standing and run deep. Scones first. My late Auntie Tessie was the world’s greatest scone-maker, bar none.

The framework of my childhood features various strands – growing up across the road from a waterfront in a neighbourhood filled with children; being part of an enormous and very close network of related families; spending most Sundays at my cranky maternal grandmother’s, followed by afternoons at Auntie Tessie’s.

We had the freedom of running wild in the bush behind Auntie Tessie’s house and the luxury of rushing back to her house for scones – always plain or pumpkin, fresh-baked in close-set rows, puffed high and served dripping with melted butter.

We sat on her back veranda or out on the grass with numerous cousins looking over the bush valley as it dropped away, and chomped on scones. And if we wanted more we got more. The generosity of those scones was part of the appeal, along with the smell – warm, inviting, simple but glorious. The message for noisy, scrappy, often filthy kids after hours of running feral? Scones are the scent of love.

I started making scones for my dad somewhere along the way. He would come home tired after a day’s work as a brickie, put on the jug for a pot of tea and I would try to throw together a batch of scones like Auntie Tessie’s. They would emerge from the oven like battle-scarred cricket balls that clattered when they hit the plate. But he would eat them and say they were wonderful. Melted butter can hide a lot of cooking sins.

I started making scone dough for my three sons when they were little, and we would spend hours rolling, kneading, pounding and squashing the dough into shapes before throwing the lot into the oven. They tasted foul, of course. Open any CWA recipe book and in clear, bold, capital letters on the opening page – possibly even framed as a mission statement in some – are the words “HELL HATH NO FURY LIKE OVERWORKED SCONE DOUGH”.

Knead your scones too much and they will become bricks, in other words.

I made scones on a more industrial scale as my sons grew into teenagers of the voracious, we-eat-anything-that’s-not-nailed-down kind. Fifteen minutes from start to finish for hot baked goods that staved off starvation – their word – until dinner and I became a dab hand.

But there is a dark side to scones. Sensible, unassuming, filling they might be, but not without controversy. The Royal Agricultural Society might have to hand back the “royal” in its title over a banner hanging above the CWA tea room at the Sydney Royal Easter Show this weekend.

It has a plate of scones, cut in half, and spread with jam and cream – with the jam on top of the cream.

Not since the last eruption of the Great Scone Splitting War, pitting the new guard of people who cut their scones with a knife versus the traditionalists who split them by hand (Me? a splitter, do I even have to say that?), has the realm of baked goods been so appalled. (BTW cream on top. Always.)

Scones were twice the source of expensive grief for me in the past, each time when my then husband made a quick dash out for cream, both times on cold, rainy nights. On one occasion his car ended up in a ditch above a tap. On the second off the driveway and at risk of hitting another house. We survived. We kept eating scones, jam and cream with hot pots of tea. Some things are just worth it.

There are times in your life when you find yourself somewhere doing something so pleasurable that you think, I could die right now and that would be okay. I couldn’t be happier. I had such a time in England a few years ago after walking for hours in glorious countryside and turning into a little village for food.

I sat in a beautiful garden and was served a piping hot pot of perfect English tea with hot, fresh-baked scones of such a golden puffiness that I didn’t want to break their perfection, served with hand-made raspberry jam and rich, thick, clotted cream. I had a fantastic book in front of me, no-one to annoy me, the sun was shining, the birds were twittering and all was right with the world.

I had the same feeling one night after walking out of a live performance by Dame Maggie Smith. It was dark and chilly but she was even more spectacular in person than on screen. And on this Easter weekend I will celebrate both – a batch of scones while watching the Dame. Gosford Park, I think.