Basic Scones

If you've never made scones do not worry! I hadn't either before last night. My first attempt went so smooth and the results were so scrumptious that I'm still looking for them...hubby and friends ate every little crumb!

I heard a lot of concerns about making scones for the first time. So let me start by saying it's not half as hard as everyone makes it seem. Just to see if I could, I made my first ever scones totally by hand in a bowl! and I do not go to the gym so my arm power was pretty weak. It took no time to make and my arm doesn't even hurt!

My professional baker friend gave me this essential advice: what really matters is using very cold butter (chilling your work bowl in the fridge also helps) and do not to worry about mixing too well, you're supposed to have lumps of butter in your dough! Roll it out onto a floured surface to 3/4-1inch thick and cut into rounds (use a cookie cutter, can, glass, whatever you have).

As always there are hundreds of fantastic recipes out there that you may prefer but here's the one I tried and enjoyed. I used frozen cranberries soaked in limoncello :)

Scones

Recipe courtesy Alton Brown

Serves: 1 dozen

Ingredients

2 cups flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup sugar

4 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons shortening

3/4 cup cream

1 egg

Handful dried currants or dried cranberries

Directions

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Mix well. Cut in butter and shortening.

In a separate bowl, combine cream with beaten egg then add to dry ingredients.

Stir in fruit. Turn dough out onto a floured surface. Roll dough out and cut into biscuit size rounds. Bake for 15 minutes or until brown.