Or, why didn’t I try this recipe before?
I don’t bake as much as I used to, is one reason. There’s only two of us in the house, and neither of us needs the extra calories. So there’s less incentive to try a new-to-me recipe, because then I’d have to eat it all, and get tired of it by the end.
And there was something stupidly intimidating about the idea of making scones. I had it in my head that they’re super fancy and not something I could just, throw together.
Not so. This took about 10 minutes to put together and another 15 to bake. Which makes sense, if I’d actually bothered to think about it; scones are traditionally made for afternoon tea in England; they’re an everyday snack. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I’m glad I tried something new.
I used the recipe for Cream Scones out of my newer edition of the Fanny Farmer Cookbook- sixth edition, from 1980. The recipe is thus:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
½ cup cream
Preheat the oven to 425. lightly butter or grease a cookie sheet. Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Work in the butter with your fingers or a pastry cutter until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the eggs and cream and stir until blended. Turn out onto a lightly floured board and knead for a bout a minute. Pat or roll the dough about ¾ of an inch thick and cut into wedges. Place on the cookie sheet and bake for about 15 minutes.
And because I can’t even try a new recipe without modifying it, I added a handful of dried blueberries about halfway through the ‘stir until blended’ part. I also found that I needed about one extra tablespoon of cream to make the dough hold together. And because I cut them smaller than I think they’re supposed to be cut, I reduced the baking time to 12 minutes.
As for the results, they’re excellent. A little dry- definitely meant to be served fresh with butter or jam- and crumbly, very similar to baking powder biscuits. My husband agreed with me- smart man!- that there’s something quintessentially British about them but that they’re not a food you’d give to a child, because children move and scones crumble easily, so putting a scone in a kid’s hand would end in a trail of crumbs. More for me!
The flavor was good, too. Subtle, and very biscuity, of course. Next time, I think I’ll try either putting some lemon zest in the dough, or making a lemon curd type icing to spread on top.
So that’s my latest kitchen experiment. If you have suggestions for other flavorings, stick them in the comments; I’m all ears. Or eyes. Or whatever.
Have you cooked anything interesting recently?
Mad Genius Club 
6 responses to “On Scones”
Cool!
Here is my go-to. the 4-year old likes them
Scones
½ cup soured milk or buttermilk
1 cup flour
1tbsp sugar
1-1/4 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda if you have, or additional ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2 tbsp margarine
1/3 cup raisin/nut/ etc
Make soured milk ½ cup milk with 1 ½ tsp lemon juice and stand 5-10 min, while preparing rest of receipe
Mix flour, sugar , salt, baking powder, and soda
Cut in margarine with fork until texture is like coarse meal
Add milk and whatever else and mix until all moist, dough should be sticky
Knead on well floured surface with enough flour until not sticky, I minute
Shape into a ball and pat into a circle, slightly domed, raisins etc should be inside, not protruding or will burn
Cut into ¼s gently with a sharp knife, about ½ way through. And let rest 10 minutes
Bake 425 20 -25 min.on after 10-15 minutes caver loosely with foil or baking paper so top doesn’t get too dark
add cinnamon to the dry and vanilla to the milk before you mix it in if you like.
Sourdough bread, which I make every week.
4 cups flour
1 cup sourdough starter
1 cup water.
Measure flour into a bowl. Pour in one cup of starter. Mix until the mixture resembles meal. Start feeding in water (I do it about 1/3-1/4 of a cup at a time), stirring until the water is mixed with the flour – then feed in more, and continue mixing.
When all the water has been mixed it you should have a gooey blob. Keep stirring it and then start kneading it. It turns into something that isn’t sticky and resembles pizza dough. Grease a bread pan and put the dough in the pan.
Cover it with a damp towel. Put it someplace warm for about five hours. (I preheat my oven to 170deg, turn off the oven and turn on the oven light – an incandescent about 40watts. That gets it warm enough, but not too warm.) If the dough rises enough to touch the towel, remove the towel.
When the bread has risen enough, preheat the oven to 425. (If the loaf is in the oven you plan to use take it out during the preheat.) Once the oven is at 425, put the loaf in and cook for 24 minutes (exact time depends on your oven).
I got the starter from my son. You should be able to make some from scratch by putting a cup of flour and 3/4 cup of water in an open mason jar and letting it sit for a few day. Once the mixture starts fermenting, add flour and water at a 3 parts flour to 2 parts water ratio every day or so. Also, once the mixture becomes starter, cover the mason jar with something air-permeable. (I use paper coffee filter using the mason jar screw-on rim to hold it to the top of the jar.)
Don’t try making bread until you have a couple of cups of starter, and don’t forget to add flour and water every time you rob it. (For that matter, continue feeding it – daily if you use it a lot, every other day or so, if you use it infrequently.)
Remember, start is alive and needs to be fed regularly. If you go on vacation, put it in the refrigerator. It goes dormant and doesn’t need to be fed for a week or two. (10 days is the most I have left it in the fridge. YMMV.)
I leave my sourdough starter in the fridge for up to 6 months (I don’t use it often). Then I’ll take it out over night, stir it up and put it on the counter, next day, I use it and add new flour and water (I use whole wheat flour, because it’s a whole wheat started – wild caught 8-10 years ago (I don’t remember for sure)) I had a white one, too, but it died about 4 years ago. Anyway, I’ll let it sit after feeding again overnight and then back to the fridge it goes.
Most of my cooking is soup-ish or stew-ish, aside from legumes (which I prefer on the less-soupy end of the scale.) Baking and I don’t always get along. Cake flour senses fear.
Gah.
I don’t like the universalizing of everything.
I miss quirky regionalisms.
I say this, because in the time and place I grew up, scones were a sweet bread dough (with a pinch of baking powder added) that was cut into wedges, deep-fried, and served hot with honey butter.
But with the mass influx of population from elsewhere, and national grocery store chains driving bakeries out of business, even a decade ago, only a few old greasy spoons were still holding on to the “old” ways.
And now, I have a hankering.