Traditional English Scones

Traditionally, scones are made with dried
fruits and served as afternoon tea (often with sandwiches and a nice cuppa!)
These are the scones I made, but there are many variations on the
classic scone recipe which just take a couple of simple alterations to the
recipe, so I will include recipes for some of the more popular of
those with this Hub too.

Ingredients: (for one batch, approx 10 scones).

• 450g (1lb) Self Raising Flour.
• 55g (2oz) Unsalted Butter, at room temperature.
• 250ml (9floz) Semi Skimmed Milk. (Plus extra for brushing).
• 80g (2.8oz) Dried mixed Sultanas and Raisins.
• 2 Tablespoons Caster Sugar.
• 2 Teaspoons Baking Powder.
• 1/2 Teaspoon Salt.

Method:

Pre-heat your oven to 220oC/425oF/Gas7, and grease and line one large (or two small) flat baking tray(s).
Sieve the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl, next cube the butter into small chunks, and add to the flour. With your hands, cover the butter in the flour, then begin to rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips. There is lots of flour and not a lot of butter, so don't worry too much about getting every little bit of flour, just as long as all of the butter gets rubbed in.
When your finished the mixture should resemble breadcrumbs.
Now add the sugar and dried fruit and mix through.
Next gradually add some of the milk, just enough to form the mixture in to a soft dough, add more milk as necessary.
Empty the dough out onto a floured surface, and knead a little just to make sure the dough isn't falling apart, if its too sticky, sprinkle over a little more flour as needed.
Now sprinkle a little flour over a rolling pin and roll out the dough to approx 1/2 inch thick. Then using a 6cm serrated biscuit cutter, cut out the scones and place on your baking tray, if you run out of dough, just fold and roll out again until you have used up as much dough as possible.
Once all your scones are on the tray(s) brush the tops with a little milk and place on a high shelf in your pre-heated oven.
Bake for about 10 or 11 minutes, keep and eye as the tops of your scones can easily burn. Once they are risen and golden on top, remove from the oven and set aside to cool.
But don't let them cool too long, as they're best served warm!
Serve with butter or clotted cream and jam, and... Enjoy!

Cheese Scones:

For (my personal favourite) delicious savoury cheese scones, make in exactly the same way. Just omit the sugar and instead of fruit mix 80-100g (depending on how much you like your cheese) of grated cheese. If your feeling a little adventurous you may want to add two different kinds of cheese!

Then as soon as they are out of the oven and still very hot, grate a little cheese over the tops of them. Don't grate the cheese on top of the scones before you put them in the oven, as the cheese will just burn.
Serve warm with butter.

Citrus Scones:

Again, exactly the same as the fruit scone recipe, but instead of died fruit mix in with the sugar 60g of mixed citrus peel into the flour.
Serve with marmalade.

Blueberry Scones:

As with the Citrus, add 60g of blueberries into the flour along with the sugar. Be gentle when mixing and kneading the dough as the blueberries will burst easily. Some of them will it's unavoidable but its good if you can have some whole blueberries in there.
As you could probably tell from the pictures I also made a batch of blueberry scones allong with the fruit ones, below are some pictures: