Hello Everyone! So from yesterday’s a post, I mentioned that I had a tea and scones party. I decided to hold one when I made strawberry jam a few days ago. I wanted to have some scones with them, but I didn’t want to eat everything for myself – and so I decided to share the love! It was an afternoon/night of fun and laughter, and meeting new people over homemade goodness. When I say meeting new people, I mean my friends from different places (uni, housemates, etc.) meeting my other friends, and becoming mutual friends.

I decided to go with very basic scones because I wanted the berry-flavoured jams and lemon curd to shine. The original recipe for these basic scones can be found at Taste. When baking them, the kitchen and hallway filled with amazing buttery aromas. You could tell that these were going to be really tasty; crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. I think we (my friend Jialing & I; we made two batches so she worked on one while I worked on the other) may have underestimated how high the scones would rise so some rose a bit too much and collapsed – but still tasty nonetheless. This recipe is for one batch, which should make about 16 scones (probably only 10-12 if you made them too big like we did :P)

PREP TIME 15 MINS | COOKING TIME 20-25 MINS | MAKES 16 SCONES

INGREDIENTS

• 3 cups self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting
• 80g chilled unsalted butter, cubed
• 1 cup milk

Only 3 basic must-have pantry ingredients! How convenient!

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 200C.
2. Sift the self-raising flour into a large bowl and add the cubed butter. Rub the butter into flour using your fingertips until the mixture resembles a breadcrumb texture.
3. Make a well in the centre and add the milk. Mix with a flat-bladed knife until the mixture forms a soft dough. If the mixture is a bit dry and crumbly, add more milk if required. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead gently until smooth (don’t knead the dough too much though or your scones will be quite tough).
4. Pat the dough into a 2cm-thick round, and using a circular cutter (about a 5cm diameter, or to whatever size/shape you want), cut out rounds. Press the dough together and cut out the remaining rounds.
5. Place scones onto a tray lined with baking paper, 1cm apart from each other. Lightly sprinkle the tops with a little flour and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden and well risen. Serve warm with cream, assorted jams, and lemon curd (for the cream, we just bought a tub of thickened cream and whisked it until it thickened to a spreadable consistency).

BON APPÉTIT

– Ally xx