Proper English Scones

A couple of weekends ago I decided to put on an authentic English tea party for the kids in the neighborhood that play with my daughter.  There ended up being 5 girls between the ages of 6 and 9. I tried to make it as authentic as possible.  Luckily for me, one of my good friends used to live in England and was a tremendous help.

In my research for recipes I found a lot of scones but all of them were in the metric measurement that is used in Europe.  So needless to say, I was thrilled to find this one which has been converted to our measurement system here in the United States.

The scones turned out moist and delicious especially when topped with clotted cream (I bought at World Market) and jam. The picture above is how they do it in England and I absolutely loved it!  Clotted cream, if you're not familiar, is basically a thickened cream so it's not sweet or anything.  But the combination of the cream and the jam is to die for.

I haven't been to England yet so it's not for me to say how these scones rate with those, but I can tell you that they were delicious.

Proper English Scones
Recipe from Rock Recipes 

Ingredients

• 1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 3 Tbsp granulated sugar
• pinch of table salt
• 3 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 whole egg

Cooking Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400º
2. In a food processor add the flour, baking powder and sugar.  Pulse to combine. (you can also just do this in a bowl).
3. Pulse in the butter, use a pastry cutter or even just your fingers to break up the butter. You want the mixture to resemble coarse wet sand. 
4. In a small bowl, whisk together the milk, egg and vanilla.  Reserve a couple of teaspoons of this mixture to brush on the scones before baking. 
5. Add the dry ingredients in with the wet ingredients and mix together with a wooden spoon.  The dough should be sticky, be careful not to overtax the dough. 
6. Put the dough on a lightly floured work surface, sprinkle a little bit of flour over the top and form into a round that is about 3/4 inch thick. 
7. Use a 1 1/2 inch round biscuit cutter or whatever size you prefer to cut out the scones. 
8. Place them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Brush the tops with the reserved liquid mixture. 
9. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the tops are a light golden brown. 
10. Let cool slightly before serving. 
11. Serve with jam and clotted cream as shown above, or whatever your favorite topping is.