Light and Fluffy Scones

A couple of weeks ago, we invited our friend, Sue, over as a thank you for all the help she gave us in the garden. We decided to make some scones, which sounds pretty easy, right? I remember whipping up light fluffy scones in England no problem at all. Here, in Ontario, at least, it has been a struggle, and not just me, but most of my friends too. We don’t have self-raising flour, and the flour we do have is heavy enough to bake bread. The scones usually resemble hockey pucks! Wasn’t I amazed to read a recipe from Paul Hollywood’s book “British Baking” that uses bread flour! Becky and I began our 17th Bake-Off challenge, Sultana Scone Ring.

You need 225g bread flour, a pinch of salt, and 40g butter, diced. Rub in the butter until you have a breadcrumb mixture. Add 40g sugar, 60g sultanas, 2 tsp baking powder, and 1 egg. We used dried cranberries instead of sultanas. Mix gently and start adding 125ml milk until you have a very soft dough. You probably won’t need all of it. Put another 25g/tbsp. flour on a work surface. Fold the dough several times, turning 90 degrees each time until the dough is smooth.  Don’t over work the dough! Make a circle 2.5cm/1″ thick and place on a prepared baking tray. Mark 8 triangles in the dough cutting part way into the dough.

Brush the top with egg and bake at 220C/425 F for 20 minutes. We gave it the full 20 minutes, but I think it could have come out a couple of minutes earlier.

The scone ring rose beautifully. We made some orange honey butter to go with it; orange and cranberries, oh yeah.

We had a lovely morning outside and then we invited Sue for lunch.

Chicken and strawberry salad with pecans. Yum!

We haven’t baked since, and Becky is away at the moment, so there probably won’t be any more baking for a while. We have been busy and will try and post some photos of our adventures.

Happy baking!

Cheryl and Becky