traditional sussex scones

The baking bug bit me at 9PM this evening. I'd wanted to skip a day without flour on my nose and butter on my fingers, but the weekend just seemed a little incomplete without something fresh and fragrant from the oven.

I opted for an easy recipe, something that'll have the least ingredients yet more unusual than just plain butter cake. I suddenly had a craving for scones, and checked it out on the web. This recipe from history.UK.com seemed easy enough. Ok, Fruit Scones it'll be for tonight.

INGREDIENTS:
1lb of Plain Flour
1 Teaspoon of Salt
4ozs of Butter
2ozs of Castor Sugar
6ozs of Seedless Raisins or Sultanas
½ pint of Milk or Water
Beaten Egg or Milk to Glaze

DIRECTIONS:

• Sift flour and salt into a bowl.
• Rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.
• Add the castor sugar and dried fruit and mix to a soft dough using the milk or water.
• Add a little fluid at a time until the dough is soft and slightly springy when squeezed.
• Cooks note: Don't try to add more fruit than this as the dough simply hasn't got the ability to lift it whilst cooking. You will get flat scones that really don't look anywhere near as nice as the big fluffy ones.
• Turn the dough onto a lightly floured table top.
• Knead quickly for a few minutes then roll out to 3/4" thickness.
• Cut into 2" rounds with a plain pastry cutter.
• Place on a very well greased baking tray.
• Brush beaten egg or milk on the top of each scone.
• Bake in a very hot oven (240 degrees C.) for around eight to ten minutes.
• Cool on a wire tray and serve slightly warm with jam and whipped cream.

RESULTS:
My scones didn't turn out fluffy at all, how unfortunate. I wonder if it's because of the amount of raisins I'd used, they did seem like a lot for the batch of dough although I only used 6oz as what the recipe required. They came out rather flat instead, having raised only so slightly. I checked other online recipes for scones, and most of them had baking powder included as part of the ingredients. Hmmm, maybe that's where it could've helped my scones fluff a little more.


Oh, and do watch the heat on that oven; although it says 240 degrees C, after 10 minutes the scones still didn't look cooked and it was way too hot to leave it at that temperature for another 10 in case it burned on the outside too quickly. I turned it down to 200 degrees C and let it bake till brown.


Taste-wise, it's pretty good! Just the right hint of sweetness, with added yumminess from the raisins. You can opt to omit the raisins if you don't like it, plain scones are just as good with strawberry jam and whipped cream.


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