Pages

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Wednesday recipe: Scones



The community group cookery class is starting back soon and I have been planning recipes for it. I have decided to start with scones, fruit scones and brown scones. Now I have to be honest, I haven't had much success with scones recently. They have been too dry, too much soda or too crumbly and so I have been testing recipes this week. So after a lot of eating (and about a pound of butter spread on scones) I have decided that the Avoca recipe is the best. I have noticed that scone recipes have changed over the years and now use baking powder and/or self raising flour and are sweeter. So the Avoca recipe is

1lb self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
2 ozs caster sugar
4 oz butter
4 oz dried fruit
1 egg
2 oz cream
about 8 oz milk
1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp water to glaze

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and stir in the sugar. Using your fingertips, lightly work in the butter until the mixture resembles dry breadcrumbs then stir in the dried fruit. Add the egg, cream and enough milk to moisten. Mix well until it has a soft, doughy texture - but it shouldn't be too moist. Gather the dough into a ball and turn it out on to a floured surface, then roll lightly with a rolling pin to 2.5cm/1 inch thick. Cut out with a round cutter, transfer to a floured baking sheet and brush the tops with the egg glaze. Bake in an oven preheated to 180C/350F/gas mark 4 for 15- 20 minutes or until well browned.
I got 16 decent scones out of this, don't be tempted to roll it thinner to get more scones, too flat and they just crumble. Also they are best eaten on the day they are baked. The cream adds a creamy lightness to the mixture.

2 comments:

Quirky Apple said...

A shop local to us sells pear and almond scones and we have been buying a few of these lately. So I think I might try that flavour combination this week. Also thinking of apricot and chocolate chip. Any other ideas?

Quirky Apple said...

Well I made pear and almond scones and they were a great hit. I added a tin of pears chopped and replaced 4oz of flour with ground almonds and a handful of slivered almonds into the mixture. I also sprinkled some slivered almonds on the top. They tasted great and I recommend that you eat these as fresh as possible.