I watch way too many food competition shows, and my tv is tuned to Food Network most weeknights. My favorite food competition of them all is the Great British Baking Show. The contestants are always just so nice to each other. I love that they are normal people who are just tying to do their best in the competition. The Great British Baking Show inspired my traditional English scone recipe.
One of the things that I find so interesting about the show is that they have so many baked goods there that I've never even heard of. Or they have things that are the same as us, but have totally different names. For example, cookies here are biscuits there. Watching the show one day I saw they were making biscuits (cookies), and starting wondering about how if they call cookies biscuits, what would they call our biscuits. So I looked it up. It turns out they just don't have biscuits over there. Even their KFCs serve fries with everything instead of biscuits, which I find very weird, but I guess delicious. With further research I determined that actually their scones are the closes thing to our biscuits.
American Scones vs. English Scones
In America our scones are usually triangle shaped, have sweet ingredients in them like chocolate chips or fruit, and frequently have a sweet glaze on them. English scones are nothing like that. They are dense, less sweet, and much more like our biscuits. There isn't usually anything added to them to sweeten them, and if they do its usually currants or sultanas (golden raisins). My traditional english scone recipe does include currants as optional, but I usually put currants in them. I like the pop of flavor it adds, but it really is completely optional.
This traditional english scone recipe makes scones that are not at all dry or crumbly. They are actually pretty soft and fluffy.
Clotted Cream
Traditionally scones will be served with jam and clotted cream, so you definitely need to check out my Easy Clotted Cream Recipe using a Slow Cooker for a way to make homemade clotted cream.
Traditional English Scones
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Total Time: 25 minutes
- Yield: 10 1x
- Cuisine: english
Ingredients
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- ¼ tsp salt
- 5 tsp baking powder
- 6 tablespoon butter, cubed (room temperature)
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 1 cup Currants, Golden Raisins or Raisins (Optional)
- ⅔ cup milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 egg (beaten)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F (220c)
- In a large bowl mix together the flour, salt and baking powder. Add the cubed butter and rub the mixture together with your fingers until the mix becomes crumbly. Then add the sugar (and currant or raisins if you are adding them) and mix together.
- Microwave the milk for about 30 seconds until it is warm. Add the vanilla extract to the warm milk and mix.
- Put an empty baking sheet into the oven.
- Make a well in the dry scone mix, then add the milk mixture and quickly mix it together.
- Put the dough onto a floured surface. With floured hands fold the dough 2-3 times until the dough is smoother. Flatten the dough down to a round shape, approximately 1 inch thick.
- Flour a 2 inch round cutter, or the rim of a glass, and cut out circles until you run out of space in the dough. Re-flatten the remaining dough into another round and continue cutting out circles. Repeat until the dough is gone. Place the cut out rounds onto a piece of parchment paper. Bush the tops of the dough with the beaten egg.
- Take the hot baking sheet out of the oven. Carefully place the parchment paper with the cut out scones on the hot baking sheet. Put the baking sheet back in the over and bake scones for 10 minutes, or until the scones are golden.
- Serve warm, or cold topped with clotted cream and jam.
