I'm so happy that I just wanted to share that my quest for a great British-type scone recipe is over and that I finally found my scone nirvana!
I've never been to Britain, but for a short period of time in my teenage years I lived near a bakery owned and operated by a couple of British ex-pats, and my mom would often stop by there after work and buy some of their scones to bring home.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I fell in love with those currant-studded scones and I've always wanted to re-create them in my kitchen, but success has always eluded me until just this past weekend when I happened upon a Cook's Illustrated recipe entitled 'British-Style Scones with Currants'. It looked promising, so I gave it a try (with a few tweaks), and WOW! Them's be the scones!!!
Without much further ado, here be the Cook's Illustrated recipe (with a few slight tweaks made by me):
Oh- before I begin, I just wanted to point out that I used King Arthur's all-purpose unbleached flour, which has a protein content of 11.7%.
-3 cups (15oz./425g) all purpose flour
-1/3 cup (2.5oz./71g) sugar
-2 tablespoons (1 oz./29g) double-acting baking powder
-1/4 teaspoon salt if you are using salted butter. If using unsalted butter, use 1/2 teaspoon salt instead. I used salted butter and reduced my salt amount.
-8 tablespoons (1/2 cup/4 oz./113g) butter
-1/4 cup (40g) raisins, chopped (the original recipe calls for 3/4 cup dried currants, which I thought sounded a bit too excessive for my tastes. My tweak worked perfectly for me.
-1 cup (8 oz./227g) whole milk
-2 large eggs (mine weighed a total of 102g for what it's worth)
Prep:
1) Cube the butter and let it sit at room temp. for about 1/2 hour to soften. (yes, you heard me right- we want softened butter for this)
2) Adjust your oven rack to the upper middle position and preheat it to 500 degreesF/260C
3) Line a 13" x 18" (33cm x 45.7cm) baking sheet with parchment paper
4) Weigh out the milk and whisk the 2 eggs into it until well-combined, then remove 2 tablespoons of the mixture into a separate small bowl (to brush the top of the scones with later before baking) Set aside.
5) Chop your raisins (if using), or measure out your currants and set aside.
6) Into a food processor (or into a large bowl if you don't have a food processor), weigh out/add together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
Directions:
A) If using the processor, give the flour mixture about 5 pulses on high to combine. If using a bowl, combine the flour mixture well with a wire whisk.
B) Adding the softened butter: If using the processor, toss the butter on top of the flour mixture and pulse about 20 times or until there is no longer any visible pieces of butter left. The mixture should resemble uniformly fine, pale yellow, powdery sand. If not using a processor, the best way to mix in the butter is either by using a pastry cutter or even better- just use your hands/fingertips. Whatever you do, just don't stop mixing until all the butter is incorporated and you have what looks like uniformly fine, pale yellow, powdery sand.
c) If you used a processor, transfer the 'sand' to a large mixing bowl and stir in the chopped raisins or the currants. If you used a large bowl to begin with, keep the sand where it is just toss in the chopped raisins or currants and mix them in.
D) Adding the milk/egg mixture: Whilst stirring with a blunt knife or a spatula (I used a blunt knife), pour the milk/egg mixture (minus the 2 tbsp you set aside in a small bowl) into the flour/raisin mixture and continue strirring just until no dry bits are left.
E) Flour your hands and your workspace, then dump the fairly wet dough onto your well-floured workspace and gather into a ball.
F) Next, you are going to do the most scandalalous, unthinkable thing to your scone dough. You are actually going to knead it with your floured hands until the surface is smooth and free of cracks, about 25 to 30 times (it took 30 gentle kneads for me to get it smooth and crack-free).
G) Gently press the dough into a disk shape and then roll out into a 1" thick x 9" round. Make sure you don't roll it too flat. It needs to be no less than 1".
H) Using a 2.5" round cutter, press swiftly and directly straight down into the dough (don't use a twisting motion as you're going down). Only when you've hit rock-bottom can you hazard a twist- but only a very slight twist to merely release the scone and cutter from the main body of dough. Place it on your lined baking sheet, then stamp out as many rounds in like manner as you can, placing them gently onto your parchment-lined baking sheet as you go.
I) Gather up the remaining dough scraps into a ball and roll out to 1", and stamp out as many more scones as you can until all the dough is used up, and place them on your baking sheet. The last 1 or 2 scones may need to be hand-shaped. I ended up with 15 perfectly shaped scones and 2 oddballs, for a total of 17 scones.
J) Brush the tops of the scones with the set-aside milk/egg mixture. Make sure to only brush the very tops of the scones so that none runs down the sides of your scones, or else it may interfere with the oven rise (so I hear). By the way, I did not need to use all of my egg/milk mixture. I had plenty leftover, so don't worry about running low.
K) Place the scone-laden baking sheet in the oven, turn the temp down to 425F/218C and bake 10 to 12 minutes, making sure to rotate the baking sheet halfway through baking. Mine took 11 minutes, by the way.
L) Transfer the hot scones to a wire rack and cool 10 minutes before eating.
M) Once completely cool, any left-over scones that you don't eat can be wrapped and frozen. To serve, just unwrap and re-heat in a 300F/149C oven for 15 minutes (directly from the freezer).
My scones (they came out so incredibly soft, light and fluffy):
Oh and to top things off (quite literally!), I also came up with a mock Devonshire/clotted cream recipe, based on having read a smattering of British cooking blogs into the wee hours of the morning. I've never tasted real clotted cream, so I didn't have anything concrete to base it on except for other's descriptions, so I hope those of you who are British don't judge my efforts too harshly. For what it's worth, it tastes great to me and my hubby and son:
My faux clotted cream (this makes a scant cup):
-3 oz./85g mascarpone cheese.
-3 oz./ 85g heavy cream (35% fat)
-14g (1 tbsp) softened butter (I used Kerry Gold brand, salted- it's all I had on hand).
-1 smidge (1/32 tsp.) vanilla extract
-1/2 tsp. caster sugar
In a 2-cup measuring cup, whisk the butter with a small whisk to lighten it up a bit, and then whisk in the mascarpone until smooth and fluffy. Next, whisk in about 1 tbsp. of the heavy cream until nice and fluffy, then lightly whisk in the remaining cream, the vanilla and the sugar until the consistency is thick, but of a slightly loose/flowing/soft-peak nature. In other words, don't whisk the cream so hard that the cream becomes too stiff. Place in a covered jar and store in fridge.
I know it's against mock clotted cream protocol- at least from what I hear if you want to make it taste as close to the real thing as possible- but I find that adding those very small amounts of sugar and vanilla (and even the tiny bit of salt from the salted butter) adds a nice, very subtle hint of flavor that keeps it from being too bland/1-dimensional, but without going overboard.
Here's a pic (I guess I would feel at home in Cornwall since I found out that I prefer putting the jam on first instead of the cream, lol):
IrishLass
I've never been to Britain, but for a short period of time in my teenage years I lived near a bakery owned and operated by a couple of British ex-pats, and my mom would often stop by there after work and buy some of their scones to bring home.
Anyway, to make a long story short, I fell in love with those currant-studded scones and I've always wanted to re-create them in my kitchen, but success has always eluded me until just this past weekend when I happened upon a Cook's Illustrated recipe entitled 'British-Style Scones with Currants'. It looked promising, so I gave it a try (with a few tweaks), and WOW! Them's be the scones!!!
Without much further ado, here be the Cook's Illustrated recipe (with a few slight tweaks made by me):
Oh- before I begin, I just wanted to point out that I used King Arthur's all-purpose unbleached flour, which has a protein content of 11.7%.
-3 cups (15oz./425g) all purpose flour
-1/3 cup (2.5oz./71g) sugar
-2 tablespoons (1 oz./29g) double-acting baking powder
-1/4 teaspoon salt if you are using salted butter. If using unsalted butter, use 1/2 teaspoon salt instead. I used salted butter and reduced my salt amount.
-8 tablespoons (1/2 cup/4 oz./113g) butter
-1/4 cup (40g) raisins, chopped (the original recipe calls for 3/4 cup dried currants, which I thought sounded a bit too excessive for my tastes. My tweak worked perfectly for me.
-1 cup (8 oz./227g) whole milk
-2 large eggs (mine weighed a total of 102g for what it's worth)
Prep:
1) Cube the butter and let it sit at room temp. for about 1/2 hour to soften. (yes, you heard me right- we want softened butter for this)
2) Adjust your oven rack to the upper middle position and preheat it to 500 degreesF/260C
3) Line a 13" x 18" (33cm x 45.7cm) baking sheet with parchment paper
4) Weigh out the milk and whisk the 2 eggs into it until well-combined, then remove 2 tablespoons of the mixture into a separate small bowl (to brush the top of the scones with later before baking) Set aside.
5) Chop your raisins (if using), or measure out your currants and set aside.
6) Into a food processor (or into a large bowl if you don't have a food processor), weigh out/add together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
Directions:
A) If using the processor, give the flour mixture about 5 pulses on high to combine. If using a bowl, combine the flour mixture well with a wire whisk.
B) Adding the softened butter: If using the processor, toss the butter on top of the flour mixture and pulse about 20 times or until there is no longer any visible pieces of butter left. The mixture should resemble uniformly fine, pale yellow, powdery sand. If not using a processor, the best way to mix in the butter is either by using a pastry cutter or even better- just use your hands/fingertips. Whatever you do, just don't stop mixing until all the butter is incorporated and you have what looks like uniformly fine, pale yellow, powdery sand.
c) If you used a processor, transfer the 'sand' to a large mixing bowl and stir in the chopped raisins or the currants. If you used a large bowl to begin with, keep the sand where it is just toss in the chopped raisins or currants and mix them in.
D) Adding the milk/egg mixture: Whilst stirring with a blunt knife or a spatula (I used a blunt knife), pour the milk/egg mixture (minus the 2 tbsp you set aside in a small bowl) into the flour/raisin mixture and continue strirring just until no dry bits are left.
E) Flour your hands and your workspace, then dump the fairly wet dough onto your well-floured workspace and gather into a ball.
F) Next, you are going to do the most scandalalous, unthinkable thing to your scone dough. You are actually going to knead it with your floured hands until the surface is smooth and free of cracks, about 25 to 30 times (it took 30 gentle kneads for me to get it smooth and crack-free).
G) Gently press the dough into a disk shape and then roll out into a 1" thick x 9" round. Make sure you don't roll it too flat. It needs to be no less than 1".
H) Using a 2.5" round cutter, press swiftly and directly straight down into the dough (don't use a twisting motion as you're going down). Only when you've hit rock-bottom can you hazard a twist- but only a very slight twist to merely release the scone and cutter from the main body of dough. Place it on your lined baking sheet, then stamp out as many rounds in like manner as you can, placing them gently onto your parchment-lined baking sheet as you go.
I) Gather up the remaining dough scraps into a ball and roll out to 1", and stamp out as many more scones as you can until all the dough is used up, and place them on your baking sheet. The last 1 or 2 scones may need to be hand-shaped. I ended up with 15 perfectly shaped scones and 2 oddballs, for a total of 17 scones.
J) Brush the tops of the scones with the set-aside milk/egg mixture. Make sure to only brush the very tops of the scones so that none runs down the sides of your scones, or else it may interfere with the oven rise (so I hear). By the way, I did not need to use all of my egg/milk mixture. I had plenty leftover, so don't worry about running low.
K) Place the scone-laden baking sheet in the oven, turn the temp down to 425F/218C and bake 10 to 12 minutes, making sure to rotate the baking sheet halfway through baking. Mine took 11 minutes, by the way.
L) Transfer the hot scones to a wire rack and cool 10 minutes before eating.
M) Once completely cool, any left-over scones that you don't eat can be wrapped and frozen. To serve, just unwrap and re-heat in a 300F/149C oven for 15 minutes (directly from the freezer).
My scones (they came out so incredibly soft, light and fluffy):
Oh and to top things off (quite literally!), I also came up with a mock Devonshire/clotted cream recipe, based on having read a smattering of British cooking blogs into the wee hours of the morning. I've never tasted real clotted cream, so I didn't have anything concrete to base it on except for other's descriptions, so I hope those of you who are British don't judge my efforts too harshly. For what it's worth, it tastes great to me and my hubby and son:
My faux clotted cream (this makes a scant cup):
-3 oz./85g mascarpone cheese.
-3 oz./ 85g heavy cream (35% fat)
-14g (1 tbsp) softened butter (I used Kerry Gold brand, salted- it's all I had on hand).
-1 smidge (1/32 tsp.) vanilla extract
-1/2 tsp. caster sugar
In a 2-cup measuring cup, whisk the butter with a small whisk to lighten it up a bit, and then whisk in the mascarpone until smooth and fluffy. Next, whisk in about 1 tbsp. of the heavy cream until nice and fluffy, then lightly whisk in the remaining cream, the vanilla and the sugar until the consistency is thick, but of a slightly loose/flowing/soft-peak nature. In other words, don't whisk the cream so hard that the cream becomes too stiff. Place in a covered jar and store in fridge.
I know it's against mock clotted cream protocol- at least from what I hear if you want to make it taste as close to the real thing as possible- but I find that adding those very small amounts of sugar and vanilla (and even the tiny bit of salt from the salted butter) adds a nice, very subtle hint of flavor that keeps it from being too bland/1-dimensional, but without going overboard.
Here's a pic (I guess I would feel at home in Cornwall since I found out that I prefer putting the jam on first instead of the cream, lol):
IrishLass
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