When I had my B&B, I made scones about twice a week, on average.
My Grandmother was a dab hand at baking scones – they were deliciously flaky and loaded with plump sultanas. She was fast and had them piping hot on the table in about 30 minutes and we would eat them with lashings of butter.
Only one of her daughters had the slightest interest in cooking or baking and luckily for me, that was my Mum.
Vi would knock up a batch of scones at the drop of a hat…usually they were fruit – sultanas or raisins. Dates were my least favourite. Sometimes she’d make cheese scones and we’d have them with home-made soup in the wintertime. Yum!
About 3 weeks after I left New Zealand to come to Canada (in 2003), Mum was admitted to hospital and just got sicker and sicker. My sister called me to say the Doctors had told her to gather the family.
We managed to get there and spent a few days with her in the hospital, at which point they told us she had terminal cancer and suggested she be moved to the hospice.
For several days we kept a daytime vigil while she mostly slept. Then at night she’d perk up and summon everyone to her bedside.
For hours at a time she would talk, non-stop. She told us stories, anecdotes, and we laughed, sniffled, sobbed and, at her insistance, TOOK NOTES.
Mum recited, off- by-heart, all her favourite recipes. She didn’t skip a beat, lose her train of thought or miss a single detail of how to make our favourite treats.
She was giving us her scone recipe, and paused dramatically for effect.
A scone shouldn't know it's being made
She explained that the less you fussed with it, and the faster you worked, the lighter and fluffier the scones would be. It’s so true.
I had always thought she made them so quickly because she was frantically busy and had so many things on the go. Now I realise it was the SECRET to her amazing scones.
Needless to say, I think of her every time I make a batch of scones. And I make absolutely certain that they never know they’re being made.
Here are a couple of my favorite scone recipes
Ingredients
SCONES
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tbspn baking powder
- ½ tspn salt
- 4 tbspn sugar
- 5 tbspn cold unsalted butter
- 1 cup blueberries fresh
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 tbspn lemon zest
GLAZE
- 1 tbspn butter
- 3 tbspn lemon juice
- 3 tbspn confectioners sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400℉
- In a large bowl, sift flour, baking powder and mix with sugar, salt and lemon zest
- Cut butter into mixture with a pastry knife or rub it in
- Gently fold blueberries into mixture
- Make a well in the centre of the mix and add the cream
- Stir carefully with a metal spoon to combine. Don't overmix.
- Tip the mixture onto a floured board or silipad and with lightly floured hands, pat the dough into a circle
- slice into 8-10 wedges with a pastry cutter or pizza cutter.
- Brush the tops with heavy cream.
- Put on an ungreased baking tray and bake for 15-20 min until the tops are lightly golden
- Remove from oven and transfer to a cooling rack.
- While the scones are cooling, make the glaze.
GLAZE
- Melt butter in microwave
- Add icing sugat and stir into a smooth paste.
- Add lemon juice and stir til all sugar is dissolved.
- Drizzle over scones.
Nutrition
Raspberry White Chocolate Scones
Ingredients
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 cup raspberries
- 1/2 cup white chocolate chips
- 1 cup heavy cream *whipping cream
- 6 tbspn cold unsalted butter
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 tbspn baking powder
Instructions
- preheat oven to 400
- place rack in the middle of the oven
- sift dry ingredients into a large bowl
- rub in the butter (or cut it in with a pastry fork)
- mix in the white chocolate chips
- gently fold the raspberries in with a spoon or spatula
- stir in the whipping cream enough to wet the dough
- dump the mixture onto a floured board or bench and bring it together gently into a circle *about 8" with your hands. Don't overwork the dough or you'll make them tough and break up the raspberries.
- Cut the dough into wedges (it will make 8 BIG wedges) with a sharp knife dipped in flour, or cut into circles with a circle cutter or a glass dipped in flour.
- Brush the tops with cream and bake for 20 minutes or until light gold on top
My mother believed there were 2 kinds of people!those who could makes scones and those who could knock up a light as a feather sponge cakes. But quick is the secret to great scones. I think A,ericans call them biscuits. I loved my mother’s date scones! Memories!
Yes, they are called biscuits here in North America – but the sweet varieties are often referred to as scones too…Starbucks does a pretty nice orange cranberry one! I never make scones without thinking of Mum. xxx