Scone

Recipe: British cream tea

Makes   about 10 small scones

Preparation time    15 minutes

Cooking time    10 minutes

Ingredients    225g self-raising flour/ 1 tbsp sugar (10g)/ 55g margarine (you can use butter instead of margarine)/ ½ tsp salt (2g)/ 1 egg (middle size)/ little milk (about 50g)

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Equipment: fluted 58mm cutter

To serve: whipped double cream, jam / cream cheese, chutney

    (Refer to my raspberry jam recipe) (Refer to my chutney recipe)

Measuring terminology: tbsp=tablespoon (15ml)/ tsp=teaspoon (5ml)

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1    Preheat the oven to 200°C/ 180°C Fan/ Gas 6~7.

2    Put the flour, sugar and salt in a bowl and mix evenly so everything is mixed into the other ingredients.

3    Add the margarine and rub it with your fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

4    Break the egg into a separate container and add milk until the total liquid is about 110ml. Mix together well.

Slowly add this mixture to the bowl and stir with a silicone spatula until you have a soft, sticky dough. (Leave a little bit of the egg and milk mixture to use for brushing the tops later.)

5    Turn out onto a well floured work surface, knead lightly. Roll out to about 2 cm thick. (Don’t overwork the dough – once it comes together the less you handle it the better.)

6    Cut into circles with a fluted 58 mm cutter and place them on a flat baking tray. Brush the tops of the scones with the remaining egg and milk mixture.

7    Bake for about 10~ 12 minutes until the scones are well risen and golden-brown.

When they finish baking, lift them onto a cooling rack for them to cool.  

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Scone and cream tea

There is a video of Mary Berry's recipe. It is a helpful reference for above step 3 of the recipe because it shows you how to knead the dough and how to make the breadcrumbs with your fingertips. When I made scones for the first time, I didn’t have a sense of the thickness for the dough. It is easy to make them too thin or thick. 2 cm thickness is best. If you roll it out too thin your scones will be flat and if too thick they are likely to lean to one side when baking.

I found that the thickness of 2 cm is up to the flute shape of my cutter therefore you can check the thickness when you cut the dough. To help scones rise evenly, always cut the scones straight up and down without twisting the cutter to the side as this will affect the rise.

After you cut out 8 scones then you will have a leftover piece of dough. You need to collect and combine this and it should be enough to make 2 more scones. Divide the dough in half and push it into the fluted cutter like a moulding to complete 10 scones. If the surface has some cracks, brushing with milk is a good way to make a smooth surface. 

When you come to eat, it is easy to split a well-baked scone in half by hand. Scones, mince pies and shortbread recipes are similar, so if you can bake scones successfully then it will be easy to bake the others.

I  use self-raising flour, you can use soft flour for cakes (Bag-leug-bun) in Korea, or if you want to make self-raising flour by yourself, you can find how to do that in my Victoria Sponge recipe.

When I serve scones, I prefer double cream over clotted cream but both are traditional options. I enjoy strawberry jam or raspberry jam but if the flavour is not too sour any fruit jam is good.

The scones from my recipe are different from the scones that I ate in Korea. I think the scones were an American scone from Starbucks or a bakery in Korea. American scones are heavier, sweeter and have a very different texture to British scones generally. They have a denser, dry texture and are usually shaped in triangles.

There is a baked item in America that looks like a British scone, but is called a 'biscuit', which is very confusing to me because Americans and the British people think differently about biscuits and cookies. To the British, biscuits are crunchy and thin baked goods. British cookies are sweeter, bigger and have a softer texture. However, in America, the biscuits that the British think of as biscuits, are called cookies. Crackers are crisp snacks with a neutral flavour made of simpler ingredients, providing a versatile base for various toppings. To the British, confectionery items sold in Korea, like Butter Coconut and Ace are biscuits, Cham Cracker and Ivy are crackers, and Chic Choc is a cookie.

The explanation is very complex but anyway, American scones and British Scones are very different.

Scones are traditional British baked goods and are a basic component of a cream tea or picnic. A cream tea is an afternoon tea consisting of tea and scones with cream, jam and sometimes butter. There is also a savoury cream tea, which consists of a salty cheese scone served with chutney and cream cheese. Both are very delicious and I often prepare both versions at home.

I usually don't make cheese scones separately, I just add chutney and cheese or cream cheese to plain scones. I like to use Double Gloucester cheese or Cheddar cheese instead of cream cheese. As for the tea, Earl Grey or English Breakfast go well with both the sweet and savoury variations. When you make large quantities of scones you can store them in the freezer and serve only as much as you need for special occasions or afternoon tea.

I used my ‘special occasion’ tableware and bought cream cheese today for taking some photos. The tableware is around 100 years old so I need to use them very carefully. They are very beautiful and have a family history, so I am grateful to use them well. However I cannot put them in the dishwasher for fear of the gold leaf peeling off or the bone or silver of the knife being damaged because these items are as old as our ancestors.

I don’t have any great desire for pretty tableware. To be precise, I'm more of a minimalist so I don’t buy something for decoration unless it's absolutely necessary. I’m also interested in the environment and reducing waste. My house looked a little bit empty for that reason. When I got married, I only bought the furniture I absolutely needed and could use without changing forever. Ironically though, because I didn’t have many things I was able to receive quite a few items passed down from my grandparents-in-law and I have become a collector. 

Most of the tableware that I use is from my parents-in-law and grandparents-in-law, along with a few pieces of furniture. Quite a few of the items in my house are over a hundred years old. The diamond in my engagement ring was also inherited from my grandmother-in-law's engagement ring. I have some gardening tools and fountain pens from both my grandparents-in-law and parents-in-law. When my parents-in-law visit my house they feel at home because there are so many familiar items. I expect it reminds them of their parents when they see them.

Although I didn’t buy any of this stuff I feel sentimental about it. I never met my grandparents-in-law because I got married late but I can feel their memory in my daily life through the stuff they passed down to me.

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A scone is a traditional British baked good, popular in the UK and Ireland. British scones are often lightly sweetened, but may also be savoury. They frequently include raisins, currants, cheese or dates. Savoury varieties of scone include soda scones, also known as soda farls, sourdough scones known as soor dook scones made with sour milk, and potato scones, normally known as tattie scones, which resemble small, thin savoury pancakes made with potato flour. Tattie scones are in a full Scottish breakfast.

출처:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=923810

Scones also vary regionally. Australian Puftaloon fried in oil, Hungarian Pogača served with various toppings including dill and cheese, Norwegian scones made with fermented milk and stuffed with raisins, orange or lemon slices, An American triangular scone made with dried fruit, pumpkin, cinnamon, or chocolate chips…Scones exist in different ways in different regions.

This information is based on Wikepedia.

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