Description
Recipe twisted from Imen McDonnell’s The Farmette Cookbook
Ingredients
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup whole-wheat pastry flour (I use Great River Milling)
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt (affiliate link)
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla (*I scraped some seeds from a vanilla pod, see note below on that)
- 1 cup cold heavy cream ((I ran out of heavy cream, so I used about a 1/4 cup buttermilk, which was nice, but completely optional))
- currants (if using)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Place baking sheet in the oven to preheat (this really does make a difference for a fluffy scone).
- Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl. Add the sugar and 3/4 cup of the cream (you may not need it all); work to dough until you have even-size clumps. If the dough is too dry to hold together, add the remaining 1/4 cup cream and mix thoroughly.
- Place the dough on a floured worktop and knead 4 or 5 times (don’t over knead, that will toughen the final scone). Dust with flour and roll flat with a rolling pin (or finger-tips) until 1 1/2 to 2 inches thick. Press the currants into the dough, then fold like a letter, this helps the scones rise like a butter scone, it’s a good trick!) Cut out 2 1/2-3 inch circles with a crimped scone cutter (a cookie cutter or thin-rimmed glass will work as well). I used a sheet of parchment paper (affiliate link) once the dough was cut out, easy to transfer onto the hot pan.
- Place the scones on the preheated tray, and bake for 11-13 or so minutes, until they have risen nicely and browned at the edges.
- Serve with jam and whipped or clotted cream (hard to find in the U.S., so you better head to Ireland to give it a try a-mazing stuff).
Notes
For this recipe, I used Kappers’ Big Red Barn Heavy Cream that I purchased at the St. Paul Farmers Market. Kappers is a family owned dairy farm located in Chatfield, MN. They produce and sell milk, heavy cream, cheese curds, and ice cream, all from their own cows. It’s pretty amazing stuff. Check out the links below.
The Farmette Cookbook
Kappers’ Big Red Barn
Here’s what I did:
• Replaced 1/2 cup regular flour with Great River Milling organic whole wheat pastry flour
• Added vanilla bean*
• Added currants (folded in to layers) no butter
• Replaced white sugar with brown sugar
• Used 1 teaspoon kosher salt (affiliate link)
• Ran out of heavy cream so added 1/4 cup of buttermilk (organic)
• Baked for 13 minutes, 11 wasn’t enough
Consensus: a little more biscuit-y than Imen’s scone, not quite as easy to make as Imen’s either (more ingredients and preparation techinque) but all-in-all very delicious as well.
*Vanilla bean addition: I halved the vanilla bean, and scraped out the seeds with the tip of paring knife, added the seeds to the flour before sifting, but it clumped up quite a bit and didn’t un-clump through the sifter. My suggestion is to use a little vanilla extract.) If you had a bunch of time and you were thinking ahead, you could steep the vanilla seeds in the cream over low heat for 10-12 minutes, then cool and refrigerate the cream until cold. The nice thing about the vanilla beans are those tiny-tiny seeds are pretty and so tasty!