When I was a child, my mum used to whip up a batch of scones whenever a visitor popped over for tea. The scones we ate were freshly baked with crusty on the outside and soft, slightly sweet inside, completely different from the plastic-wrapped, biscuit-like creations I see labelled as scones in coffee shops here in Japan. Although the classic way to eat scones is as part of an 'English Cream Tea' (scones served with jam and thick clotted cream with a dainty pot of English tea), at home we had them with butter and jam and a mug of tea.
My mum knew her recipe for scones by heart, but when I made scones this week, I had to start by finding a recipe. I decided to use one by the famous Mary Berry, a British celebrity chef well-known for her baking skills. Her recipe is here.
When I adjusted the recipe to use plain flour instead of self-raising, it looked like this:
INGREDIENTS
435g plain flour
8 level teaspoons baking powder
50g sugar
100 g butter
2 eggs
300 ml milk
METHOD
1. Mix flour and baking powder in a large bowl.
2. Cut butter in small pieces and use your finger tips to rub into the flour. Keep going
until you can't see the butter. This is called 'making breadcrumbs' in English. It
should look like this when you finish.
3. Mix the sugar into the breadcrumbs.
4. Break the eggs into a jug. Mix the eggs. Add milk to make 300 ml of liquid in total
and mix the milk and egg together.
5. Add 270 ml of the egg-milk liquid to the breadcrumbs in the bowl. Keep about
30 ml (2 tablespoons) in the jug.
6. Mix the egg-milk liquid into the breadcrumbs. You will have a very sticky dough.
7. Turn on the oven to 200 C. Cover two baking sheets with non-stick oven paper.
8. Turn out the dough onto a table with lots of flour on it. Roll out the dough with
rolling pin or flatten with your hands until it is about 2 cm thick.
9. Use a cutter (mine was about 10 cm diameter) or a glass to cut round shapes from
the dough. Place them on the covered baking sheets. Collect together the unused
dough and roll it out again to cut more scones.
10. Brush the tops of the scones with the left over egg-milk mixture from number 5.
11. Cook in the oven for 10-12 minutes.
12. Take out and place on a cooling wrack. Eat while still warm.
In the Autumn, I hope to start running a 'Cooking in English' event once a month. I look forward to making scones together!
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