Scones

I love scones. Whenever I spend some time in the UK or Ireland I eat as many as possible. Well, obviously not as many as possible - that would cause serious problems with my wardrobe... Notwithstanding my love for fresh, warm scones with clotted cream and jelly, it took me until the beginning of this year to find out that I could make them at home. For some strange reason I just thought it was a really tricky recipe. So I was very surprised, when I learned about how easy it actually is and that it only requires ingredients, that I have in my cupboard most of the time. So now the only problem is finding the clotted cream in Zurich...

 

This here is a basic scone recipe. I like them plain, but you could easily add raisins or chocolate chips or dried fruit. A word about the sugar: I like to use brown sugar, but of course you could also use white sugar. Also, an interesting thing happens when you lower the sugar amount to 30g: the taste of the scones will be on the verge of sweet to savory, so I imagine they would go great with e.g. gravad lax.

225g flour
1 tsp. baking powder
0.5 tsp. salt
40g sugar
40g butter, cold and in pieces
1 egg
100ml milk

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Prepare a baking tray with baking paper.

In a bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.

Add the butter pieces and grind it together with the butter (ideally using cold hands) until you end up with an even, crumbly, dry mass.

In a separate bowl mix together the egg and the milk and then add it to the flour-butter-mix. Quickly blend all the ingredients, trying to knead the dough as little as possible. It doesn't matter if it still looks uneven, as long as the wet and dry ingredients are combined.

Sprinkle a little flour on the working surface and lightly flatten the dough to about 2cm. Cut the scones using a round cookie cutter of about 4cm diameter.

Bake the scones in the middle of the oven for about 12-14min until golden brown.

Eat directly from the tray, with a little clotted cream and jelly. Or, if you're more disciplined than me, let them cool down until lukewarm and serve on a nice plate. Of course, you can also let them cool down completely, but scones are best eaten when really fresh, so don't wait with eating them for longer than a day or two.

Since clotted cream is quite hard to find here in Zurich (or ridiculously expensive) I usually use double cream (fat content of about 50-60%) and beat it until fluffy.

The jelly in the picture is crab apple jelly (not homemade). I believe traditionally it should be strawberry jelly, but I didn't have that in my cupboard at that moment. And at least I bought the crab apple jelly in Edinburgh, adding a real Scottish component to my Sunday breakfast.