Dr Mobeus
Cream Tea Scones
Scones are the cheapest thing in the bakery and the most expensive thing in the tea room, which makes them the clearest case for baking at home there is. Four hundred and fifty grams of flour, a lump of butter and a splash of milk make eight tall ones for about £1.40, against 80p and more for a single scone in a cafe, and the home version comes out of the oven warm, which no cafe can match. The two rules that matter are cold butter handled as little as possible, and dough cut a full 3 cm thick, because scones never rise taller than they start. Whether the jam goes on before the cream is a West Country civil war with no winner, so pick a side, pour the tea, and settle in.
Cream Tea Scones
Ingredients
Method
- Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan) and line a baking tray with paper.
- Rub the cold butter into the flour, baking powder and salt until it looks like breadcrumbs. Work quickly so the butter stays cold.
- Stir in the sugar, make a well and add most of the milk. Mix with a knife or a spatula to a soft, slightly sticky dough, adding the rest of the milk only if needed.
- Tip onto a floured surface and pat it out gently to about 3 cm thick. Do not roll it thin, as thickness is where the height comes from.
- Cut rounds with a 5 cm cutter, pressing straight down and lifting out without twisting, as twisting seals the edges and stops them rising. Re-pat the offcuts and cut again until you have 8.
- Brush the tops with milk and bake for 12 to 15 minutes until golden and well risen, then cool on a rack.
- Split and fill on the day they are made. The Devon order is cream first then jam, the Cornwall order is jam first, and the argument is half the fun of a cream tea.
Tips and Variations
Frozen butter grated into the flour is even easier than rubbing. The dough should stay soft and a bit sticky, so flour the surface well rather than drying the dough out with more flour. Baked scones freeze well and come back to life in 5 minutes in a hot oven. A squeeze of lemon into the milk makes a passable buttermilk for a slightly sharper, richer crumb.
