Scones

I never ever normally make scones, I love them, they are one of my favourite afternoon tea treats but when I made them for the first time about 20 years ago they were a disaster and came out like little hard rocks! The other problem I have is that my Mum makes the best scones ever, so you can see, competition is tough.

As you will be aware, if you are a regular to my blog, I recently brought Prepped by Vanessa Kimbell and I am rather happily baking and cooking my way through the entire book, every recipe so far has turned out just like the photo’s in the book and feeling buoyed by the success I was having so far I felt it was time to face my nemesis, the scone !!! As you can see from my photo’s they came out a treat and I am extremely proud of them, so much so, that I posted pictures of them on Twitter and Facebook and got a great response.

Hubby and I enjoyed them with a nice glass of wine, perched on the hill that looks over the lakes where we live, in glorious sunshine, it was truly heaven.

Buon appetito

225g self-raising flour
75g butter, chilled, cut in small pieces
50g Vanilla Sugar (You could use ordinary caster sugar, but as a Prepped fan, I now have a selection of flavoured sugars ready at hand)
¼ tsp salt
125ml buttermilk ( ordinary milk will do, I used ordinary milk & they were still divine)
3–4 tbsp milk ( I didn’t add this, the dough was just perfect without it, if I had used buttermilk, then maybe I may of needed to add it)
Extra flour, for dusting
Vanilla Sugar, for sprinkling
1 egg, beaten, for the glaze

Preheat the oven to 180˚C/gas mark 4.

Put the flour, butter, salt and sugar into a bowl. Mix well. Make a well in the centre and add the buttermilk. Bring the mixture together to form a dough. If the dough seems a bit too dry, add a little more buttermilk, a teaspoon at a time. Being the cheat that I am, I did all this in my Artisan!

Turn out onto a floured work surface and use your hands to form a 2.5cm round. Cut out shapes from this, depending on your preference, and put them on a baking tray. I rolled mine out with a rolling pin to 2.5cm and then used a heart cutter, they looked so cute.

Glaze the scones with the beaten egg and bake for 18–20 minutes and sprinkle with sugar.
Cool on a wire rack. If you want to freeze these scones do so as soon as they are cool.

Enjoy the same day, they are so much nicer fresh. You can freeze them when they have cooled, but I love mine warm from the oven dripping with butter in the colder months and this time of the year they are just perfect with strawberries and cream.