PROPER BRITISH SCONES RECIPE
One trip to England will ruin you forever on American scones. What is the trick to making a proper British scone? It’s a question that’s plagued me through numerous attempts for many years. And after much practice, I’m pleased to say that I think I’ve finally hit on a recipe for proper British scones. It’s a scone recipe that will not let you down. It’s light and fluffy. It cracks horizontally in the most tantalizing manner, and will pop apart on that line with the slightest pressure from the tines of a fork. It’s sweet, but not sugary. And its melt-in-you-mouth-tender flakey goodness will leave you feeling transported to England!
On our first trip to England in 2017, we were more than happy to indulge in every cream tea that we could squeeze into our travel schedule. (Cream tea consists of: scones with cream and jam and a cup of tea.) While we were staying at a farmhouse in the Yorkshire Dales, we journeyed to nearby Leven’s Hall to tour the house and the famous topiary garden. While there, we visited their onsite café, which at the time was called the Bellingham Butt’ry. We ordered the cream tea and sat down to enjoy our afternoon repast in this simple café. Were we ever in for a treat! Without a doubt, their scones were amazing! They were the lightest, fluffiest scones we had had in all of England! How do they do it?
And so began my quest to create a proper British scone. I wanted one miles high and fluffy as a pillow! But, try as I might, they always turned out hard and chewy. They were dry and sugary. The feeling of failure crept upon me as I washed down every dry morsel with copious quantities of tea. What was the secret?
One thing that we noted was that British baked goods are sweet, but they’re not sugary. You don’t feel the sugar in your teeth they way you do with American baked goods. Why was that, I wondered? I then realized that most British dessert and baked goods recipes call for caster sugar (or superfine sugar), as opposed to the granulated sugar we typically use in America. With the use of caster sugar and a few other adjustments, I do believe I managed to create a scone that is almost as good as the one we remember.
I’ll leave it to you to decide if it’s cream first and then jam, or jam first and then cream. Personally, I like the jam first and then cream. But it’s more photogenic the other way round, so there you have it. If you live in America, you can find genuine English Clotted Cream at Whole Foods (in the refrigerated section). Click below for the recipe for Proper British Scones.
