How To Make Scones For Afternoon Tea?

This website offers a number of fundamental pointers for getting started baking scones. As soon as you have a firm grasp on the fundamentals, making scones and even coming up with your own own recipes may become pretty simple.

The Technique

• As a general rule, scone recipes start by whisking the wet ingredients together and mixing the dry ingredients together.  Then cut the butter into the dry ingredients either using a pastry blender or your fingertips until you’ve created a crumble texture.
• Combine the wet ingredients all at once to the dry ingredients, mixing well but not overworking the dough.  Mixing the dough too much will toughen it and make rock-hard scones.

The Ingredients

• Use real butter, not margarine, because the consistency of the butter is important to the texture of the scones.
• Keep your wet ingredients cold.  Make sure to use chilled butter and milk straight out the refrigerator.  Colder scone dough rises better so if you’ve been having problems, try leaving the dough in the fridge to chill before baking.  This is an especially good idea if you’re just learning how to make scones and have been working with the dough for a while at room temperature.
• Sprinkle flour on your work surface, your hands, the rolling pin, and the dough itself to avoid a sticky mess when rolling out dough.  If the dough starts to get warm, it will make it sticker and much harder to roll.  Place the dough in the fridge to cool down and try again.

Baking

• Bake scones in a fully preheated oven.
• Scones are done when a toothpick comes out clean and the bottoms are a deep brown.
• After baking, leave to cool on the pan for about 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack.

Planning Ahead

• You can prepare the batter and cut the dough pieces ahead of time.  Arrange them on the baking sheet and keep in the refrigerator until you’re ready to bake.  Then simply pop them into the oven when your tea party guests arrive and serve warm when they are finished baking.  Arranging the scones in a basket lined with linens will help them to stay warm.
• Scones can also be stored in the freezer for up to a month.  To reheat, wrap them loosely in aluminum foil and bake for about 10-15 minutes at 350° F.
• If the scones are room-temperature, reheat in the oven for about 5-10 minutes at 250° F.

Easy Scone Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 6 tablespoons sugar, plus a couple pinches
• ½ cup cream or buttermilk, plus about 2 tablespoons
• 1 large egg
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400° F.
2. Shift the dry ingredients into one bowl (flour, baking powder, and sugar) and gently mix together.  Whisk together the cream and egg in another bowl.
3. Cut the butter into cubes and work it into the flour mixture by hand until it becomes a fine crumble.  It’s okay to still have some small butter chunks that are no larger than the size of a pea.
4. Make a well in the center of the flour crumble and pour the wet ingredients into the well.  Use a few gentle strokes to combine the wet and dry ingredients until the flour is nearly moistened.  Be careful not to overwork the dough.  It’s alright if there are still dry bits of flour in the mixture.
5. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface.  Flour both your hands and the dough and knead it 1-2 times to combine the dry flour bits and form it into a ball.  Pat the dough into a thick disc.
6. Flour a rolling pin and lightly flour the top of the dough disc.  Roll out the dough from the center until it is about ¾ inch thick.
7. Cut the disc into 8 triangles (like a pizza) or use a cookie cutter if you desire another shape.  Place the dough pieces onto a greased baking sheet.
8. Using a pastry brush, lightly coat the tops of the dough pieces with the additional cream.  If desired, also lightly sprinkle them with the extra sugar.
9. Put the prepared scones into the preheated oven and bake for about 12-15 minutes or until the scones are lightly browned and the bottoms are deeply browned.  Serve warm, if possible, with clotted cream and jam.

Yields approximately 8 scones.