(Image Credits: HBO and Landman M. [edited])
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Ah, high tea...such a treat, but also such a wallet killer ðŸ˜. Well, why not just make it yourself? You’ll get to enjoy several rounds of it for the price of 1 and all in the comfort of your own home 😎! Sounds like a plan? Then stick with us for the next few weeks 'cos we’ll be covering everything you need to know in this 5-part series. Alright, enough talk. Let’s get to the 101 of the scone!
125g unsalted butter (cold)
250g cake flour
13g baking powder
37g fine sugar
50g milk (cold)
75g whipping cream (cold)
40g egg (cold)
65g dried fruit (cranberries/raisins/blueberries/currants; if you choose to use anything
bigger, cut them up)
Yield: 655g (8-10 Scones)
Preheat Oven to 180°C
1) Cut butter into approx. 1cm³ cubes. (no need to stress over getting it perfect!)
2) Sift flour and baking powder, then mix with sugar till evenly distributed.
3) Cut butter into flour mixture till sandy.
4) Mix milk, cream, and eggs till homogenous, then incorporate into butter-flour mixture till a shaggy dough forms.
5) Mix in fruit till evenly distributed throughout dough and dough is homogeneous i.e. all the liquid is absorbed and no dry spots of flour are visible.
6) Rest dough in chiller for 2h. (leave it in your mixing bowl and remember to cling wrap it so the dough doesn’t dry out)
7) Flour your work surface, dough, hands, and whatever tools you decide to use for step 8.
8) Roll out dough - or flatten it out with your palm - to 3-3.5cm thickness and punch with a cookie cutter or cake ring that is approx. 6cm in diameter. (alternatively, cut the dough into 5cm x 5cm squares)
9) Brush scones with egg wash and rest uncovered for 30min.
10) Brush scones with egg wash again.
11 ) Bake for 11-15min. (the longer, the crunchier your scones’ exteriors will be)
Recommendations and FAQs
🔪To minimise your dishwashing load:
=> measure flour and baking powder in the same bowl
=> measure milk, cream, and egg in the same bowl (crack egg into a separate receptacle and beat it before pouring 40g into the aforementioned bowl; keep the remaining 10-20g for your egg wash in steps 9 and 10)
=> remember to tare/zero your scale before measuring out each new ingredient!
🔪If you are looking for good-quality dairy that ain’t too pricey, go for President, Paysan-Breton, or Lurpak.
🔪You can play with the proportion of milk and cream so long as they add up to 125g. It just depends on how rich you want the final product to be. Using more milk might mean that you will have to lengthen the baking time by a minute or two.
🔪Must I really sift the flour and baking powder? Cake flour tends to clump up, so yes, you should sift it. And since you are going to sift the flour anyway, why not sift the baking powder along with it....🤨?
🔪Can I replace the cake flour with all-purpose flour to avoid the trouble of sifting? Sure, sure...but if you want your scones to be as tender as possible, just stick to cake flour and put in that extra bit of effort!
🔪What do you mean by ‘Cut’ in step 3? Click here for a few ways you could go about doing this. We do, however, recommend using a stand mixer if you have access to one. Simply let the paddle do its thing till you see the mixture turn sandy, with the butter coating all the flour.
🔪I’ve come across recipes that call for the same technique as step 3 and which recommend that I keep some of the butter as pea-sized chunks. Is this necessary? When it comes to scones, we would say this is really more of a preference thing. Keeping some of the butter in pea-sized chunks would lead to a flakier final product🥳. If you were to mix a bit further and get all the butter down to the size of cornmeal, however, you would be distributing the fat more completely and doing a more thorough job of coating the flour. This would lead to less gluten development and give you a more tender final product🤩.
🔪Why must I rest the dough at steps 6 and 9? Resting at step 6 is for the sake of relaxing any gluten formed in the dough. You want a tender scone after all! As for step 9, getting the punched-out scones closer to room temperature helps them to bake evenly throughout. (If you decide to reuse the scraps of dough you are left with to make a second batch, lump them together and rest the dough in the chiller for about 1h before repeating the process from step 7 so you don’t yield tough scones!😳)
🔪Can I freeze the scones once I have punched them out and bake them some other time? Of course you can. Do thaw them in the chiller overnight before proceeding to step 9, though. Otherwise, they will tip over or crack when baking due to uneven heat distribution. Not to mention, they will be undercooked unless you lengthen the baking time!