Another delicious attempt at scone making

I love scones. I love going to tea houses for afternoon tea and having scones with lemon curd and cream. Sometimes it’s my favorite part of the tea tradition. With your afternoon tea, the tea sandwiches arrive first, then the scones with lemon curd and cream on the side and lastly, the little desserts.

I’ve made a few attempts at making scones in the past. Although they taste delicious, they don’t look how they are supposed to look because I always have difficulty managing the dough. It’s very sticky so instead of being triangles or cute perfect round scones made with a scone cutter I purchased, they end up looking like little muffins or imperfect flat circles. But they are still delicious!

I’ve tried many scone recipes in the past but I think I just found my favorite recipe so far. I found the recipe on wildwildwhisk.com:

https://wildwildwhisk.com/basic-buttermilk-scones/

The scones are so buttery and flaky. The texture, consistency and taste of the scones actually remind me of the scones that we eat when we are in London. Those scones came plain or with raisins.

For this recipe by wildwildwhisk.com, you will need buttermilk as well as cubed cold butter. I think those are the magic ingredients. Start with your dry ingredients which are flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and sift them into a bowl. Take the cold, cubed butter and work it into the dough with your fingertips until the dough is the size of peas. Next, take the wet ingredients which include buttermilk, vanilla and egg and fold them into the dry ingredients. The next part is the part that I always have difficulty with because of the stickiness of the dough. The dough is supposed to be turned out on a floured surface and shaped into a circle and then cut into triangles. The dough is so sticky that I have so much difficulty. I always end up spooning the dough onto a baking sheet.

I made two sizes of scones. For the bigger scones, I spooned about 2 tablespoons of dough onto a baking sheet. The dough spread, so the scones ended up as flat, imperfect circles. They might look imperfect but I must admit that they are still oh so delicious. Especially when they are hot and fresh out of the oven. They are so buttery, flaky and taste delicious with coffee or tea.

I made some plain and some with dried cranberries. For the smaller scones, I spooned some dough into a mini cupcake tin. The scones came out as cute little 2 bite mini scone muffins.

mini scones

To ensure that the scones end up buttery and flaky, make sure that there are still little pieces of butter in the dough. The little pieces of butter melt while baking and create a flaky texture. Turning the dough over itself in the last step also creates layers, making the scones flaky. It’s important not to use too much flour when turning the dough or else the scones will end up dry. In addition, the wet dough creates softer scones.

If you are able to make these scones into triangles, then each triangle is about 270 calories each. Since I couldn’t manage making the triangles, I made 12 round circles and 9 mini scones with this recipe.

Try this recipe for the most delicious scones to eat with your afternoon tea.

Happy baking!