Delicious Scones

I once had the good fortune to taste scones made by Anna, a pretty gal from Sweden who lived with Ethan and I during her MBA studies at the James Cook University campus here in Singapore. Since then I had been hooked on scones - simply because she made scone-baking look so simple, yet they turned out to be simply so delicious!

This morning I decided to try my hand at baking some scones. After scouring the net for recipes, I decided to try the recipe at Allrecipes.com but with my own variation (shown below in brackets).

The ingredients are:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup (brown) sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder (2/3 ts cream of tartar, 1/3 ts baking soda)
  
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda (see above)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (1/4 ts salt)
  
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, frozen (didn't have unsalted, so used salted butter!)
  
• 1/2 cup raisins (or dried currants)
• 1/2 cup sour cream (no sour cream, so curdle fresh milk with orange juice instead!)
  
• 1 large egg

Procedure

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 400 degrees (200 deg C).

Use a blender and mix the dry ingredients first - flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, sugar, salt, then using the 'pulse' setting, add 1/2 of a 25-gm frozen butter block that has been cut in small pieces and pulse the mix until the butter is incorporated into the flour mix. You want to avoid kneading the flour mix with your warm fingers, as too much kneading 'toughens' the scones instead of making them light and crisp. The mixture will resemble a dry crumbly mix.

Next, add the raisins. Now stir in the egg-milk-orange mixture that has been beaten smooth. I used a shaker-cup to whip the mix - *grin* - be sure to add the liquid egg-milk-orange mixture in small portions to the flour mix, to avoid adding in too much liquid. You want a dough that holds together into a ball, one that is not too soft and sticky when you try to roll the dough in your palms. If you inadvertently added too much liquid, well, add more flour until you get a dough ball that does not easily stick to your hands.

Place the dough ball onto a baking sheet or on a lightly floured surface and pat into a 7- to 8-inch circle about 3/4-inch thick. Sprinkle with about 1 ts of sugar. Use a sharp knife or cookie cutter to cut into 8 triangles or alternatively cut into rectangles about 1-inch apart for crisper scones. Bake until golden, about 16-17 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes and serve warm or at room temperature.

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About 14 minutes into the baking, an enticingly wonderful aroma wafted into the study area. I immediately left my desktop PC for the kitchen to peer anxiously into the Rinnai oven - my first scones are baking beautifully !

After the scones had cooled, I took my first bite of the scones. Gosh - it really tasted wonderful with my coffee, and I couldn't stop helping myself in quick succession to 3 of them!

As an after-thought, if you apply an egg-wash to the scones before baking it will turn out more golden.