Recipe 8

Wholemeal scones

I make scones quite often, but they’re always cheese ones. My cheese scone recipe comes from a now shuttered cafe called The Ministry of Food that used to operate from the bottom of the building that the first law firm I ever worked for as a Summer Clerk was located in. I like the MoF’s cheese scone recipe, because all you have to do is mix stuff together in a bowl, tip the mixture onto a floured board, shape it into a rectangle and cut it into as many pieces as you want scones. You don’t have to do the annoying thing of rubbing cold cubes of butter between your fingertips that many other scone recipes ask of you.

This morning I broke my own never bother with rubbing the butter rule when I made Jess Elliott Dennison’s Wholemeal Scones (recipe from her good book, Weekend Recipes). I’d spied these scones a while ago while flicking through the book’s pages and thought they sounded quite nice - the introduction to the recipe described them as having a digestive biscuit-like quality due to the addition of wholemeal flour and a little bit of brown sugar. On one of my recent Friday morning visits to the supermarket I remembered to pick up a bag of wholemeal flour, which has sat in the pantry for a few weeks, waiting for me to have the necessary level of enthusiasm for butter rubbing. (In truth, Friday just been I bought a tub of clotted cream, as I figured having that in the fridge would be the thing that really spurred me into scone making mode).

I make out like rubbing butter into flour is complex and time consuming. It’s not. The scone dough came together quickly, and that was in spite of the recipe also calling for it to be kneaded (lack of kneading is the other reason why I like that Ministry of Food recipe). Jess’ recipe called for the scone dough to be rolled out into a 2cm thick disc, which meant I finally got round to using the small vintage Indian rolling pin that I bought in a second-hand shop in Margate last year, (in response to Phil asking whether I really needed it I assured him I’d make lots of chapatis and naan breads; I’ve made none). I double-checked my version of 2cm thickness with Phillip, who is the resident expert on these things, and he assured me I’d got it right. I used a glass to cut six round scones as the recipe instructed, and then popped them in the oven to bake for 12 minutes.

I had more leftover dough than I expected, so instead of rolling that out into a 2cm thick disc, I brought the leftover scraps together, flattened them ever so slightly into a much thicker 6 - 8cm disc, and cut the dough into four haphazard squares - my usual rough and ready approach.

The first batch of scones - the 2cm ones - made me laugh. They looked more like ever-so-slightly swollen digestive biscuits, rather than puffy, fluffy scones. Phil cracked up when he walked into our living room and saw them on the dining room table. “Biscuits for breakfast!” I declared. They were, size aside, delicious, and did have the promised digestive biscuit taste. They had a really lovely texture too, because butter rubbing pays off. I said to Phil that they seemed more like scones for morning tea, or with a cup of coffee, than scones for breakfast.

The next batch of scones, my thick, rumpty ones, looked equally ridiculous, were equally delicious, and in my view were better breakfast time scones.

We had the scones with the clotted cream and Bonne Mamman Blackcurrant Jam. I will make them again, and the next time I do, perhaps have them with cheddar and fresh grapes as Jess suggests.

My favourite line in Jess’ recipe was this:

Using a biscuit cutter or glass, cut out six 6cm rounds plus an ugly little ‘cook’s treat scone’ with the scraps…

I forgot to follow this step. More fool me.