British Scones - recipe

This is a post I previously posted on another site, but it belongs here, as well.

When I was growing up, I thought scones were basically biscuits, but maybe a bit sweeter. When I was a bit older, scones were a heavy pastry to grab from Starbucks with my coffee. After moving to the UK, I learned that scones are actually a heavenly, sinful delight that rarely resembles the heavy, though tasty, lumps you can buy in coffee shops in the states.

A year or so ago, I was providing the food for a get-together for other wives from my husband's workplace. Since we were in the UK, I thought some light traditional dishes served with tea and coffee were just the ticket. I had more time than money, and I like the personal touch that home-baked items give to a menu, so I found a recipe and tried making my own scones. I was surprised, and thrilled, at how easy they actually were! Even better, after mastering the basic recipe, it wasn't hard to come up with flavor variations.

Here's the basic recipe...then I'll talk about some easy variations:

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You will need:

2 cups flour

1 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 tsp baking soda

pinch of salt

1/4 cup COLD butter...unsalted if possible

2 Tbsp(ish) sugar

1/2 cup (ish) COLD milk (or cream)

Start by heating your oven to 425°F (220­°C). Line your baking sheet (or stone, if you have one) with parchment paper. Parchment paper keeps the bottom of your scone from sticking to your pan, and gives a professional finish to your home-baked product.

Next, sift your flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl. Most of the time when recipes say to sift, I ignore it, but for this it really seems to make a difference. Also, make sure you're measuring your flour properly. Spoon it gently into your measuring cup and give it a light shake to help it settle. It's better at this point to have too little flour than too much. You can always add a bit later if you need to...but it's harder to fix if you have too much. Too much flour will make your scones heavy.

Next, cut your COLD butter (not frozen, but cold from the fridge) into small cubes. Add the butter to your dry ingredients, and rub it in with your fingers. "Rubbing in" the butter was a new concept to me, as I'd always been taught to use a pastry cutter, knives, or fork for mixing the fat into biscuit or pastry dough...but doing this with fingers made a huge difference. You want the mixture to look like bread crumbs, and this is much easier using fingers. Another hint I got, later, from a pastry cook, is to get your fingers very cold (dipping them in ice water or running cold water from the tap over them) so your fingers don't melt the butter.

When your mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs, or you can't see/feel any more large butter lumps, stir in the sugar. Next, add the milk(or cream) and stir to make a soft dough. You don't want too much fluid here, so it may be easier to add the liquid a bit at a time. If you have some flour bits that don't want to join the rest of the dough, that's ok. Don't force it or add too much liquid. Set down the spoon and try pressing it in a bit with your hands.

Turn out your dough onto a lightly floured surface. Knead the dough three or four times, just enough to make it seem to be sticking together, then divide your dough in half. Knead each half another four or five times (you want the TOTAL number of "kneads" on each half to be around 8-10) and form each half into a circle. Use your hands or a rolling pin to make the circle around 3/4" thick. Then cut each circle into 6 wedges with a knife or pizza cutter.

Put the wedges onto your prepared baking sheet. You can brush milk on top of your scones with a pastry brush, which will give a slightly shiny top, or just leave them the way they are. The milk on top is purely cosmetic, so it's up to you. Next, bake in your preheated oven for 10 minutes. Let your scones cool slightly, then serve with butter or clotted cream and jam or lemon curd.

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This note is getting fairly long...so I'll explain variations in the next note(s).

 Here is a link to some basic variations or Chocolate variations.