Hello friends
Today is Easter Monday and another public holiday so I decided to do some baking.
I made scones! Really big scones! The kind of scones that you can say “no no I really couldn’t have a second one” and mean it! LOL
A short family history of scones
When I was a kid we ate a lot of scones. My mum baked every week and one of her favourite things to bake was scones. She made plain scones (nothing added), fruit scones (raisins or sultanas added) and treacle scones (you guessed it, scones made with treacle). She was a good baker and they were really delicious. She always used self raising flour and really didn’t like baking powder, mostly relying on whatever was already in the flour to make them rise (baking powder lol!) My dad liked to have the plain scones with cheese on them, a bit like a cheese sandwich but with a scone instead of bread. I wasn’t so keen on plain scones, unless they got a bit stale and then you could toast them and the butter would melt all over them and then you could put strawberry jam on them – yum yum! But my favourites were the fruit scones and the treacle scones as they were also delicious but didn’t really need anything added to them as they already had their own flavour, so just some butter would be fine, and a nice cup of tea. The great thing about baking scones is that they are very quick to make and take no time at all in the oven, 10-15 mins, so if you had last minute visitors you could quickly rustle up some lovely fresh scones hot from the oven. Sometimes if we had run out of bread my mum would whip up some scones to eat instead and use them in the same way.
On Sundays, we used to have “Sunday lunch” – which was really a dinner-sized meal – around 12-1pm instead of having “dinner” at the usual time of around 5pm, so then when Sunday evening arrived, we would have scones and other baking my mum had made that day. Sometimes there would be soup leftover from lunch, and there would always be apple tart also leftover from lunch, but really the “main course” was plain scones with cheese. Something I started doing back then and still enjoy is strawberry jam and cheese together and I know I’m not alone in that as since then I have discovered other people also like that combination. If you want to try it, it’s also good with melted cheese but be careful as the jam will be hot underneath!
I learned to bake scones (and other things) at an early age. My mum used to give baking lessons to me and my BF at the time, every Friday night after school. Over the years though I have expanded my baking repertoire and scones seemed a little boring as my techniques developed and my tastes got more exotic. The humble scone was retired to the back of the recipe book. Lately though, I have been back to making scones and like my mum, sometimes I would realise I was out of bread, so I would whip up a batch of scones in less than 20 mins. Other times I just really miss the flavour of a fruit or treacle scone – I never make the plain ones if I can help it – and sometimes I just like to remember happy times from childhood and those Sunday evening suppers.
Yes I know I said they were big enough to be able to politely refuse a second one but I was hungry and had two for lunch. Oh did I mention these are vegan scones? Most of my baking is vegan but the only substitution needed is the milk, so use whatever milk you like and don’t brush any egg on the top, use the milk or nothing at all. If you want to make your own, I have added the recipe below. The recipe makes 5-6 of these enormous scones or more if you make smaller scones.
Let me know what you think in the comments, especially if you try the recipe, and as always, thanks for reading!
Challenges
Blog Along with Effy – Day 5
Links to all the days of the April blog along
April 1st – Day 1 – You don’t have to be perfect to be amazing
April 2nd – Day 2 – Cat hammocks and sneak peeks
April 3rd – Day 3 – Favourite Children’s Books
April 4th – Day 4 – Green Crochet Socks Story
This month I decided to join in with Effy Wild’s blog along – 30 posts in 30 days and hope I can think if enough things to say. every. day. I’ll do my best to keep up. The idea is to blog every day (obvs) but also to comment on other people’s blogs to keep the conversation going. There is a facebook group where you can link your posts and find other people’s to go visit and comment. During April you can find all the Blog Along posts linked on my home page for convenience.
Ingredients
Fruit Scones (vegan)
500g plain flour (or if you like cup measurements 3 cups and 1/3 cup)
1 teaspoon salt
25g caster sugar (or 2 tablespoons)
2 teaspoons baking powder
75g vegan margarine (or butter if not vegan)
300ml milk of your choice (soy, almond is fine if vegan, cow’s milk if not vegan) 300ml is just over 1 cup btw
*raisins or sultanas if required
*optional vanilla extract, cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 220C or 200C if fan oven
Mix the flour, salt, sugar and baking powder together in a bowl.
Then add the margarine/butter and rub together until the texture is like fine breadcrumbs.
Add the milk and the raisins and mix together. If you like vanilla, or cinnamon, add this now, say a teaspoon or less.
Tip the mixture out onto a floured surface and shape it into a round that is about 4cm (1.5″) high.
At this point you can use a cutter to cut out round scones, any size you want, or you can use a knife and cut them into triangle/wedge shapes.
Put them on a floured tray and into the oven for 10-15 mins keeping an eye on them as they rise and turn golden brown.
If you aren’t vegan, you can brush your scones with egg before baking, or if you are vegan, you can brush them with whatever milk you are using.
I hardly ever use self raising flour but you can if you want, just use less baking powder, say 1 teaspoon instead of 2. It’s really hard to go wrong with this recipe so enjoy experimenting. I have even used bread flour when I had nothing else in the cupboard and they still turned out great,
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Thanks for visiting today. Your comment is really appreciated.