buttermilk scones & how a friendship developed

I am by no means a fancy baker, but I do really enjoy baking and do it regularly. I like doing simple cakes or loaves, I make a mean chocolate and pecan brownie. However, I always opt for simple icing, I don’t care for butter or fondant icing and my icing skills are shocking (which is why Michelle decorates my children’s Birthday cakes – my horror the year my youngest daughter asked for a pink dinosaur!). Perhaps what I am best known for amongst my family and friends are my scones. Simple to make, but boy have I paid for and eaten some bad ones over the years; too dense, too dry and crumbly, loaded with baking powder to make them rise, etc! That said it is generally always a scone I opt for when I’m out for coffee.

My quest for the perfect scone started about 6 years ago! I was visiting a friend who’s Mum was staying with her. Her Mum makes the best scones and when I asked how she made them she said with buttermilk and no baking powder. They were easily the best I’d tasted so there started my search for the perfect scone recipe. I tried and tested many but settled with this recipe here. I use it as the base for any other flavour scone I’m making, both sweet and savoury.

In fact it was this very recipe that sparked my friendship with Michelle. A mutual friend of ours had been round for morning coffee and a scone, she’d mentioned this to Michelle. “You’ve got a recipe I need” said Michelle next day in the school playground. So a love of food, an invite to sample and the sharing of a recipe is what started all this off almost 4 years ago. Here we are on the first anniversary of our blog going live and we share with you the recipe that started it all.

buttermilk scones

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Serves

12-16

Ingredients

• 500g self raising flour
• 100g caster sugar
• pinch salt
• 100g unsalted butter (chilled from fridge and diced)
• 2 medium free-range eggs
• 200 ml buttermilk

Directions

In a large mixing bowl combine the flour, sugar and salt. Add the chilled butter and rub together gently through your fingers until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. Do not press the mixture together.

Beat the eggs with the buttermilk and add to the dry mixture and mix using a round knife. Use your hands to gently bring the dough together into a ball. (Take care not to over-work the dough as this will only result in dense, heavy scones. The lighter the handling the lighter the scone).

Place the dough onto a floured surface and roll out to around 3cm using a floured rolling pin. (If you don't have a rolling pin pressing gently with the back of your hand will suffice). Using a 6cm round cutter stamp out your scones and place them on a greased and floured baking sheet. Using a pastry brush, brush the top of the scones with the remnants of the buttermilk mixture left in the measuring jug to give a golden top to the scones.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200CFan for 16-18 minutes or until the scones have turned golden on top. Remove from the oven and serve. Scones are always best served warm, fresh from the oven but they can be cooled and frozen easily enough.