Scones

Alright, let's not fuck about - here is what you need:

Ingredients:

• 350g self raising flour
• 90g butter
• pinch of salt
• tsp of baking powder
• 175ml milk
• a squeeze of lemon
• a drop of vanilla
• an egg
• fresh strawberries, if they're in season
• Extra flour
• Even more flour
• Dried fruit (I consider this completely optionasl and usually leave it out)

How You Do:

First, you want a good hot oven, 220 degrees C. Important: Chuck your baking sheet in there to get good and hot as well.

Mix the flour, salt and baking powder, rub in the butter.

OR, cheat and whacknit in the fucking food processor, whatever 😏

Mix in 3 tbsp caster sugar. If you've been using the processopr, like I do, this is the moment to transfer the mixture to a nice big mixing bowl.

Warm the milk and mix in the lemon and vanilla. (Or you could probably use buttermilk, but who has fucking buttermilk?)

Pour it into the buttery floury mixture and combine to make a dough.

Throw flour everywhere, tip the dough out, pat it into a thick round lump. Get a round cutty fucker, dip it in flour and cut out your scones. Make another lump and do it again. You don't want to have to repeat this step too many times, because the dough doesn't like being manhandled that much.

You should get about eight scones from this recipe. Try to make them roughly even sizes. Brush the tops with beaten egg and then pop them on that hot baking sheet and sling them in the oven for ten minutes.

Wait, did you put the dried fruit in? Oh. You probably should have done that. Just before the sort-of buttermilk, I think. Oh, well. They will be nicer, in my opinion.

Notes

You can either leave the dried fruit out completely, which is what I usually do, or you can use something like dried apricots and cranberries, or glace cherries. (This is the next best option, in my opinion. I'm really not a fan of sultanas and currants.)

The best way to eat these is when they are barely cooled from the oven. Brew yourself a decent cup of tea to go with. Slice it in half and get some proper butter on there. Hopefully it's warm enough that the butter starts melting into it. You also need a quality jam on each slice. Strawberry is classic, but bramble or cherry is also top notch.

A good scone needs cream. I confess I've used the squirty stuff in a can when I haven't got anything else, but let's be honest, a proper home baked scone deserves the good stuff. Sometimes I go for freshly whipped double cream with a leeeetle bit of vanilla and sugar in it, or sometimes clotted cream. If I have fresh, in season strawberries, I put a slice on top.

Because I use butter and fresh fruit, I prefer to go in this order:

butter, jam, cream, strawberry

I know some people will come for me for that, because they think cream-then-jam is the only way. Look, if you are skipping butter and not using fruit, and especially if you're using clotted cream (which spreads beautifully) then this is a fine option. But me, I can't do fat, fat, fruit/sugar, fruit. That's just weird. It has to be fat, fruit/sugar, fat, fruit. Much better layering.

I can't remember who gave it to me originally. Like lots of others I've tried, I just scribbled it down in a notebook somewhere. This has turned out to be a summer favourite in our house.

Afternoon tea, anyone?

+++++++

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed this recipe. Let me know if you give it a try!