Today I decided to make scones, because it’s been a while since I made scones, and also scones are stupid easy to make, and also this recipe uses both lemons and orange, both of which I happen to have in massive abundance. Yay scones!
The key to a good scone is that you mix all the dry ingredients together first, then you add in the (cold) butter and you mix it together by hand, until the butter is well incorporated (the mixture should look a bit like sand, and you’ll still see some larger, pea-sized lumps of butter). Only once that part is done do you add in the wet ingredients (in this case, some cream), and once you add the wet, you only mix the dough until it’s *just* incorporated. You’re aiming for a delicate crumb, and overmixing will active the gluten in the flour and give you a more bready product instead of a crumbly biscuit sort of affair.
One other step that most scone recipes don’t mention is that if you want your scones to hold their shape, you should pop the whole pan into the freezer for maybe ten to fifteen minutes to chill up the dough after it’s been mixed and shaped and cut. I probably should have done that, except that I got a late start on these (because I was too busy playing with adorable foster kittens) and needed to toss them into the oven before running downstairs to get to work.
Anyway. I’ve been doing half recipes of a lot of the things I’ve made so far this month, but for this one I did the full batch. Here they are, fresh from the oven, and drizzled with the orange glaze.
And here is a single scone, gently extracted from the herd, and ready to be consumed.
Verdict: absolutely delicious, as expected. There’s a brightness from the lemon, while the glaze on top adds just the right amount of sweetness. Yum! This recipe is definitely a keeper.
Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.