The most important thing in a scone recipe is not the quantity of ingredients or even what’s in it – it’s the method. Follow this method for any scone recipe, and it will be gold. The most crucial part of the scone is the interplay between the butter, flour and temperature. Butter is made primarily of fat and water. What you want is for butter to stay in a nice cold form so that the fat won’t melt and release water prematurely before it hits the oven. If the butter does melt, water will interact with the flour molecules and make gluten, toughening the scone. In addition, you want the butter to be as cold as possible before it goes into a hot preheated oven – this way, instead of the butter melting into the flour, it instantly makes steam, which results in a light, puffy, flaky scone.
600 g/4¼ cups plain/all-purpose flour
75 g/⅓ cup caster/superfine sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
5 teaspoons baking powder
240 g/2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 1-cm/½-inch cubes and chilled for at least 10 minutes
2 eggs
120 ml/½ cup milk
150 ml/⅔ cup whipping cream
round cookie cutter in the size of your choice
baking sheets, lined with parchment paper
makes about 24
Put the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a large mixing bowl (or in an electric mixer with paddle attachment) and stir with a wooden spoon until well combined. Add the cold butter and rub between your fingertips (or in the mixer with the paddle attachment) until you reach a sand-like consistency. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.
Put the eggs, milk and cream in a separate bowl and beat lightly. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 180˚C (365˚F) Gas 6. Preheating is crucial!
Fold the egg mixture into the sandy flour mixture until just combined and no bits of dryness remain. (As soon as you add any form of liquid to any dough, keep in mind that the flour will automatically want to make gluten with liquids, and the best way to prevent that is to keep the dough from being overworked or warming up.) The dough should be quite wet and, when pulled apart, break off in clumps and not stretch. Refrigerate for 10 minutes.
Flour your work surface and rolling pin liberally. Flip your cold dough on the surface. Don’t knead! Liberally flour the top of the dough. Roll the dough to about the height of the cookie cutter you’re using. Dip the cutter in flour and use to cut a round from the dough. Transfer to the prepared baking sheet. Continue cutting out rounds, then gather up the off-cuts and gently re-ball and re-roll to cut out more.
Put the scones immediately into the preheated oven for 8 minutes if you have small, skinny scones, and 10 minutes if you have big, fat ones.
After the time has elapsed, turn the oven down to 170˚C (340˚F) Gas 5 and let the scones bake for another 8–14 minutes. How do you know a scone is done? It has a lovely golden colour, will have risen quite a bit and will spring back when pressed lightly. Serve warm with clotted cream and strawberry jam on the day of baking.