The AWW Afternoon Tea Challenge: Basic Scones

Shameless repost from my baking blog, for your Sunday viewing pleasure:

I picked up this fabulous little baking book on special at Coles awhile ago, and pretty much everything in it looks so lush that I figure I might as well bake it all. Yep, every recipe, one at a time. A bit Julie & Julia, I know, but the Australian Women's Weekly cookbooks are so classic that I couldn't resist (fyi, it's now been re-released as High Tea). I'm starting with Scones. Which, er, is actually Chapter 2, but I'm waiting til the weather fines up a bit and we can do all of Chapter 1's Sandwiches pretty much in one go ,on a summery picnic with friends. I can't put marinated cucumber sandwiches in my 4 year old's lunchbox for playgroup and expect her to eat it, after all.

First up is, perhaps not surprisingly, Scones with Jam and Cream:

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups (375g) SR Flour

1 tablespoon caster sugar

30g (1 ounce) butter, chopped
1 1/4 cups (310ml) buttermilk

3/4 cup (240g) black cherry jam (I used some of our neighbour's homemade strawberry jam instead)

1 cup double cream

Method

1).Preheat oven to 220C. Grease a 22cm square cake pan.

2). Sift Flour and sugar into large bowl; rub in butter.

3). Add buttermilk. Use a knife to cut the buttermilk through the flour mixture to make a soft, sticky dough. Turn dough onto floured surface, knead gently until smooth.

4). Press dough out to 2cm thickness, cut out 4cm rounds. Place scones, just touching, in pan. Gently knead scraps of dough together; repeat process. Brush scones with a little extra buttermilk.

5). Bake scones about 15 minutes. Serve warm with jam and cream.

The verdict:

Difficulty: there are a million ways that people prefer to make scones, but these are an easy, surefire hit - nice and fluffy and just the right amount of golden on top.

Taste: ooh I already said fluffy didn't I! Perfectly delish with jam and cream, just the thing to sink your teeth into with a cup of tea and a truckload of girly gossip.

Mess: Floured benchtop = floured everything in sight. I am not a neat person.
Cost: Thanks to our homebody neighbour supplying the jam, everything was already in the pantry/fridge. Buttermilk is awesome in pretty much any cake so always keep some on hand!
Finger-lickin’ factor: not really a lick-the-bowl recipe, but dipping your finger into some double or whipped cream is always a nice little sneaky treat...

The outfit:

Summertime eating scones would usually require a floral frock of some sort. But I just wanted to share with you a really cool buy I nabbed at Supre yesterday. Yes, Supre. Sometimes it's a treasure trove of little gems, when it's not too busy being an overcrowded nightclub: