Scones

When in Rome…
So today my grandmother and her two Japanese friends descended on us. In true German style, we thought we would welcome their visit to Germany with afternoon tea, British style. Ahem.
 

You will need:

350g flour and a little more for dusting
3 teaspoons of baking powder
A pinch of salt
100g butter
120ml milk but a few teaspoons for brushing

Most recipe books will tell you to sift the dough, barely knead it and add one ingredient carefully after another. I’m much more laid back when it comes to cooking. This used to drive my cooking class in Japan crazy. They always wanted to know how much a pinch of salt was, or if I meant a heaped or a flattened teaspoon of herbs… For me, I chuck in whatever looks good and I have yet to have a meal I have made that wasn’t enjoyable.

So, for quick and easy scones without the hassle, preheat your over to 180 degrees (Gas Mark 4). Put the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and mix. With your fingers (this is the fun part): get involved! Rub in the butter and just generally enjoy the feeling of making something delicious with your fingers. Keep going until you have a mixture that resembles breadcrumbs.

Then add the milk bit by bit and knead away. You will end up with a ball. Cover the worktop with a light dusting of flour and flatten out the mixture to about 2cm. What I like to do next, is fold the mixture over and pat it down again. This will give you a line down the middle of the scone, making it very easy to slice when preparing to eat, as it should almost fall apart.

Also, there is no need for a rolling pin, I just pat the mixture down to about 2cm again and cut out a size you like.

As we have just arrived we obviously don’t have cookie cutters, so I lightly dusted a glass and pushed it into the dough.

Keep re-doing this step until you have used up all the dough. If you have some left, I like to make a “special” scone. It is bigger and more knobbly and if I can get it to resemble Pacman then extra points to me (see bottom right of photo).

Stick your tasty morsels onto a baking dish and brush them with a thin layer of milk. This will help them to go brown on the top. No need for a brush, I just used the back of a teaspoon… keep it simple. Then into the oven for 16 minutes. That is how long it took mine to rise and cook and go golden, but every oven is different, so I would have a look after 10 minutes and then check on them every 2 minutes after that until you are content with the results. Take them out of the oven and let them cool slightly. As you can see from the photo below, there is a clear cutting line down the middle of the scones where I folded them over.

Enjoy with clotted cream if you can, or squirty cream if you haven’t found a supermarket that stocks it yet and add a large helping of jam. Personally I would I recommend making homemade apricot or strawberry jam, but I will leave that up to you. To drink, you will need English tea and as if by chance, our grandmothers brought a large box England’s finest Yorkshire Tea for us just today. Sit back and enjoy the quintessentially British pastime of High Tea.

On a side note: I forgot to add the raisins, even though we went out especially to buy them yesterday, so if you are looking for fun alternatives, add a handful of raisins (soak them in orange juice for an hour for added flavour) before adding the milk or cut a handful of dried apricots into small pieces and mix them in. Other suggestions always welcome too, I love trying out new stuff. Thanks for reading!