Baking Therapy - Scone Medicine

Kelly’s Scone Medicine

2 cups/280 grams Flour

1/4 cup/50 grams White Sugar

2 teaspoons/10 grams Baking Powder

1/2 teaspoon/2 grams Salt

1/3 cup/76 grams Cold Butter (cut into chunks)

1 large (that's metric large too) Egg (lightly beat that sucker)

1/2 cup/120 ml Whole Milk

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

You can put down a piece of parchment on a cookie sheet if you want to prevent the scones from sticking, but you don’t have to if you don’t have it.  Just make sure to remove the scones from the ungreased cookie sheet while they are still hot.

Okay the mixing part.

Combine all your dry ingredients into a bowl.  Mix it up… see that was easy!  Okay now take that cold butter and toss it in that dry stuff you got there and use a pastry blender to “cut” the butter into the dry mixture.  If you don’t have a pastry blender you can use forks or two knives.  Don’t do this in a food processor or with an electric blender, that will overwork your dough and you will end up with doorstops instead of flakey scones.  We don’t want that do we.

Okay, keep cutting that butter into the dry stuff until it looks like a coarse meal, like little balls of butter and flours about half the size of a green pea.  Now we are ready for the egg and milk action.  Combine your slightly beaten egg with the milk, mix it up good until the milk turns all pale yellow then dump it into the flour and butter mixture.  Using a large spoon (of the wooden variety is my preferred spoon) start mixing in the milk and egg.  Don’t over mix, you are going to JUST mix it to get the flour stuff all moist.  This dough will be sticky, so don’t fret.

Divide it up into 3 equal portion.  Take one portion out and put it onto a well floured board.  You are going to knead it about 5 or 6 times.  The trick is when you press your dough flat, flip it over then fold, then press flat again.  Repeat that the 5 or 6 times I mentioned.  What you are doing is folding the floured side together, this is what makes those lovely flakey layers you are after.

Now make that kneaded dough into a little mound about 5 inches (12.7cm) in diameter.  The center of your little mound should be slightly higher than the outside rim, so it’s kind of like a dome.  Now take a big knife and cut it into half and then half again so you have 4 (and that is 4 for you metric users out there) equal pieces. 

Now what I like to do is brush the tops of my scones with milk then sprinkle a pinch of turbinado sugar onto them.  You don’t have to do this, you can leave them plain if you want.

Stick them on your cookie sheet and bake them for about 10-12 minutes until they are golden brown.  Top them with butter, clotted cream or marscapone cheese with fruit preserves.  YUM!

Now go make and take your medicine!