Baking: Week 4 - Filling - Scones

Week: 4
Theme: Filling
Dish: Scones

This was a failed attempt. I had originally wanted to make clotted cream for my filling, but it's quite labor intensive. Then I thought I would just fall back on whipped cream, but then I realized that my cream had gone bad -- it was chunky! :( So I just filled it with jam.

Here's the recipe from Jamie Oliver's Jaime's Food Revolution:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup mixture of raisins and/or dried cherries (I used raisins)
• Orange juice for soaking
• 4 cups of self-rising flour, plus a little for dusting
• I made my own rising flour with this mixture: 1 cup flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup milk
• Jam
• 2/3 clotted cream or heavy cream, whipped (failed on my part. :( )

Steps

To Make the Dough

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
• Soak the cherries and raisins in a little bowl with just enough orange juice to cover them
• While they're soaking, you can either pulse the flour, baking powder, and butter in a food processor just until the mixture starts to look like breadcrumbs, or you can blend them together by hand.
• Transfer to a mixing bowl and make a well in the middle
• In another bowl, beat the eggs and milk with a fork
• Drain your cherries and raisins in a strainer and add them to the beaten eggs and milk with a good pinch of salt
• Then pour your beaten eggs.milk, cherrie and raisin into the well in the flour mixture and stir well, adding a splash more milk of necessary, until you have a soft dry dough
• If your dough feels a little dry and doesn't come together, add an extra splash of milk

To Make the Scones

• Dust a clean work surface and your rolling pin with flour
• Roll out the dough until it's 3/4 in thick
• Using a 2 1/2 in round biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass, cut out 10 circles from the dough and place these on a non-stick cookie sheet
• You may have to roll your dough out again in order to get all 10 rounds out of it, but try not to knead it too much
• Dip a pastry brush into some milk and brush the top of each scone
• Bake in a preheated oven for 12 to 15 minutes, until risin and brown
• Take them out of the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool

To Serve the Scones

• Cut each scone in half across the middle
• Spoon a dollop of jam on the bottom half of each one followed by a dollop of clotted or whipped cream and put the tops back on
• Don't forget the tea!

I didn't have a food processor so I just broke things up with a wooden spoon and when I realized things weren't working out with the spoon I just broke up the big pieces of butter with my hands.

I didn't get a picture of me mixing the flour, but I found that mixing it a bit with a spoon and then following it up with mixing by hand the most useful method. Also try to get a huge mixing bowl. Mine was way too small and it made mixing a real pain. 

After I pulled it out, I realized that I should have added a bit more milk. My dough didn't have a smooth texture and was prone to crumble. Next time I will definitely mix in more milk. I think I also had a bit too much dough because I didn't account of the extra amount of baking powder and salt when I made my self-rising flour.

My glass ended up being a bit too big and my 10th scone had to be smaller and formed by hand. I put it on parchment paper to keep clean up easy.

I didn't have a pastry brush, hence the messy milk splatter. Time to put it on my to buy list.

I ended up cooking these longer than 15 minutes because they didn't seem brown enough.

Of course, who eats scones without some tea? I made some English Breakfast. :)

In the end, the scones came out crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. It's a bit crumbly, but very good. I've only had scones like once so it's hard for me to say if this was a tasty scone, but it's certainly a tasty something!

I don't know if the jam counts as a filling since I didn't make the jam, but I really tried to make the clotted cream. Sometimes you just have to deal with what you have.