Scones Recipe

Fill your home with the smell of freshly baked scones.  This delicious recipe is adapted from Jamie Oliver. ‘The less you handle to scone dough, the shorter and crumblier your scones will be.’ 

Ingredients

• 150 g dried fruit, such as sour cherries, raisins, sultanas, chopped sour apricots, blueberries, chopped dates, or a mixture
• orange juice, for soaking
• 150 g dices, cold unsalted butter
• 500 g self-raising flour, plus a little extra for dusting
• 2 level teaspoons baking powder
• 2 heaped teaspoons golden caster sugar
• sea salt
• 2 large free-range eggs
• 4 tablespoons milk, plus a little extra for brushing

Topping

• Jersey clotted cream, good-quality jam or lemon curd, to serve

Method

1. Put the dried fruit into a bowl and pour over just enough orange juice to cover and leave for half an hour, just enough to rehydrate the fruit. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Put your butter, flour, baking powder, sugar and a good pinch of sea salt into a mixing bowl and rub together so you get little cornflake – sized pieces. Make a well in the middle of the dough, add the eggs and milk, and stir it up with a spatula. Add your fruit that to the mixture. If needed, add a tiny splash of milk until you have a soft, dry dough. Hug together as little as possible to get it looking like a scruffy mass – at this point, you’re done. Sprinkle over some flour, cover the bowl with cling film and pop it into the fridge for 30 minutes.
3. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface until it’s about 2 to 3cm thick. With a 6cm round cutter or the rim of a glass, cut out circles from the dough and place them on a baking sheet. Brush the top of each scone with the extra milk, olive oil or some melted butter and bake in the oven for 12 to 15 minutes, or until risen and golden. At that point, take them out of the oven and leave them to cool down a little. Serve with clotted cream and a little jam or lemon curd.
4. A great little tip if you don’t want to bake a whole batch is to freeze the dough after you’ve cut them out. That way, you can come home from work, pop the little rounds of frozen dough into the oven and cook them at 180°C 25 minutes, or until golden and lovely.