In the Imbolc 2016 episode of our podcast, Reaching for the Moon, Qabal shares a delicious recipe for homemade scones. For your ease in making these delicious treats, we’re sharing the no lies recipe below so that you can make your own foodoo at home!
Ingredients:
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 4 tbsp sugar
- 1/2 tsp table salt
- 5 tbsp unsalted butter cut into quarter inch cubes and then frozen
- 1/2 cup currants, cranberry, raisin – any fruit chopped to the size of a raisin (optional)
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
Modifications:
- Add vanilla
- Add orange rind to make it citrusy
- Rosemary – with less sugar, you can make a more savory scone
- Want a fluffier scone? Double baking powder!
Do not add:
- Anything that will add moisture, so not fresh fruit
- Chocolate chips – add too much fat and tends to burn. If you want to add chocolate chips, make it wetter and lower the temp for cooking
Once your ingredients are assembled, preheat oven to 425. Allow to sit at this temperature for at least 15 minutes.
Step 1: Combine flour, salt, and sugar. You can use a food processor to achieve this, or a wisk or your hand.
Step 2: Add the butter – using a food processor to pulse until it gets to a lumpy cornmeal consistency. Or use pastry blender to cut the butter in.
Step 3: Mix in your currants or whichever dry fruit you will be using.
Step 4: Add the cream. This is a process. Add 1/2 a cup to start, stir gently. Then wait a few moments to hydrate the flour. Humidity may make this process tricky.
Step 5: Flour can absorb flour from the air. You may not use the entire 1 cup of cream. Stop adding your liquids when your mixture looks like this:
Step 6: This is the way we want our mixture to look. It will look a little dry. You want the dough to end up just a little wet but not too much. In the above, we used 3/4 cup of cream due to the humidity that day.
Step 7: Put the dough in an 8″ cake pan to get a nice round shape, then tap it out of the cake pan to get ready to cut. You can skip this step and just make your own round shape about 8″ across. You’ll then cut this length-wise into 8 triangles.
Step 8: (optional) Brush some cream on your scones before they go into the oven. This will give them a nice brown crust. You can also sprinkle them with a little sugar if you want a slight sweetness.
Once in the oven, your scones will be done in about 12 minutes. You can flip the scones midway for even browning.
Remove from oven, cool on a wire rack for just a few minutes. Below is what the crumb of our scones will be. It should have a cake-like look but be crunchy.
If you double the amount of baking powder you will get a much lighter scone. This crumb will airier and fluffier.
They can be served warm or at room temperature. You can serve them with tea or coffee, and jam goes really well with these.