Showing posts sorted by date for query Scones. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query Scones. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Cherry and Vanilla Scones. These are not cherry scones. These are not vanilla scones. These are Cherry and Vanilla Scones and they are completely different from my other Cherry Vanilla Scone recipe.
That one uses dried sour cherries and is lovely in its own tasty right, sporting a sweet vanilla glaze.
This easy recipe uses candied cherries, or glace cherries as they are also known. Feel free to use maraschino cherries if you cannot find the glace cherries. Just make sure you rinse them well and then dry them before using them in the recipe.
Otherwise they will tint your scone dough pink.
The recipe for these scones was adapted from one I found in a little National Trust book entitled The National Trust Book of Scones.
I love National Trust recipes and their books. They are filled with lots of little antidotes and many are actually recipes which are used in the tea rooms at their various properties which are dotted all over the country.
We always belonged to the National Trust when I was in the UK. They are a trust for the preservation of historic properties, gardens and farms all over England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
I have always loved visiting their historic properties. Not only are they areas of great beauty, but they are always fascinating and quite informative, historically speaking. I do believe that the Prince of Wales is a Patron.
Beatrix Potter bought up huge scathes of land and properties in the Lake District in an effort to prevent developers from taking over the area and destroying its natural beauty, which was then turned over to the Trust upon her passing.
The Trust is a worthy association which has done a lot to preserve the history and beauty of the UK. They are mainly supported by people visiting these properties and by people who donate to and support the organization. I worry about how it may have fared during Covid.
I hope that it will come out alright in the end.
I wish they had properties such as those here in Canada. I am a real history buff and I love visiting places like this. This is one thing I have in common with Susan Branch.
Anyways, if you ever have the chance to visit the UK, so go to as many National Trust Properties as you can. You won't regret it. You can buy a membership for the time that you are there and it will allow you to into as many places as you wish to for that given year. Well worth the price.
Most of their properties have shops and tearooms/restaurants/cafe's attached where you can go and sit down and have a lunch or a drink and a piece of cake or whatnot. Their treats on offer usually reflect the property where the teashop is located.
All of their food is great. We never visited one without having a drink and a piece of cake or a scone.
As I said, this scone recipe comes from one of their books and I would classify it as an every day type of scone. There are no eggs and cream in it.
Just simple ingredients. Self raising flour, butter, sugar, milk and vanilla. Oh, and those candied glace cherries.
True confession here. I did run out of red cherries today and had to resort to using a few green ones. I could have left them out altogether, but I did want to be able to taste the results from having used the full amount.
It is a generous amount of glace cherries to be honest, which is just lovely. That means they are generously studded throughout with bits of sweet cherry.
I know that it might be difficult for some of you to get glace cherries. You can use maraschino cherries in a pinch, but do beware that they are a bit flimsier than glace cherries.
You will need to rinse them well, and dry them really well, and then be gentle in your handling of them. I always rinse and dry my glace cherries as well.
These are not quite as rich as scones made with cream and butter, but they are still really lovely. Light and crumbly and sturdy enough to spread with cold butter without tearing or breaking apart.
You can enjoy them warm of course, but the wonderful thing about scones is they are equally as delicious to enjoy cold as they are warm.
The same basic principles apply when making scones as when making biscuits. You will always need to use a gentle hand in order to keep them from being tough.
You also need to get as many cuts as you can from the first patting out as subsequent cuts will not be as perfect looking once baked as the first cuts will.
Also for straight sided scones, take care not to twist your cutter when cutting them out. Twisting the cutter seals the edges which prevents your scones from rising properly.
You will get a much higher rise if you stamp them out with a straight up and down motion. Also the re-pats and cuts will not be as tender, because once again . . . they are a fussy bread which benefits from the least amount of attention as possible.
I know my scones and have shared quite a few different recipes on here over the years for a variety of both savory and sweet scones.
Some of my favorites are: Honey and Date Scones (flavored with honey and studded with plenty of bits of dates), Cheese, Spring Onion and Bacon (studded with cheese, chopped spring onions and crispy bits of bacon. Great with soups or salads), Nan's Sugar Scones (a lemon soaked sugar cube is inserted in the center prior to baking, resulting in an almost lemon curd like filling), Irish Coffee Cake Scones (studded with dried currants and topped with a crunchy streusel topping), Three Ingredient Cheese Scones (yes, only three ingredients. Nice and cheesy.)
My favorite all time Classic Fruited Scones (the kind you will find on offer at most establishments and tearooms in the UK), these are scone perfection. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. If you click here you will get a list of all my scone recipes.
So you can see, I really love scones, and I was very pleased with the way these turned out. Warm or cold, with butter or without.
With or without jam or honey, even just on their own, these are quite simply really nice scones. I was very pleased with the outcome and I think you will be too! Enjoy!
Cherry & Vanilla Scones
Yield: Makes 10 (3-inch) scones
Prep time: 15 MinCook time: 18 MinTotal time: 33 Min
Simple to make, studded with cherries and flavored with vanilla.
Ingredients
- 3 1/2 cups + 2 TBS (500g) self-raising flour
- 1/3 cup (40g) finely granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup (60g) cold butter, cubed
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 120ml (1/2 cup) whole milk (may need more)
- 1 3/4 cup (200g) glace cherries, quartered
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375*F/190*C/ gas mark 5. Line a large baking tray with some baking paper. Set aside.
- Sift the flour and sugar into a mixing bowl. Drop in the bits of butter. Rub the butter in, using your fingertips, until the mixture resembles fine dry bread crumbs.
- Mix the milk with the vanilla. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add the milk gradually, mixing with a round bladed knife until you have a soft dough. You may need more or less milk. Stir in the cherries, distributing them as evenly as you can.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and pat out to approximately 1 1/2 inches in thickness. Cut into 3 inch rounds using a floured cutter and taking care not to twist the cutter.
- Transfer the rounds to the prepared baking sheet, leaving about 2 inches in between each. Re-pat the scraps and repeat cutting until you have cut all your scones. (Bear in mind the most tender scones will be the ones from the first cutting, so do try to get as many from that as you can.)
- Brush the top of each scone with a bit of milk and bake in the preheated oven for 15 to 18 minutes, until well risen and golden brown.
- Scoop off onto a wire rack to cool. Best served warm with some butter and jam.
Notes:
You can easily make your own self-rising flour. Just add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp of salt to each cup (140g) of flour needed. Works a charm. This is what I used here today.
Thanks so much for visiting! Do come again!
I thought that there was no better way to begin the month of August than to share a delicious blueberry recipe. And you cannot get more delicious than an old fashioned blueberry muffins!
Whenever I think of August, I think of blueberries and corn, and when I think of wild blueberries, I immediately think of blueberry pie and blueberry muffins! It doesn't get much better than that!
Today's delicious Blueberry Muffin recipe comes from none other than the baking doyenne herself, Mary Berry. This is a gracious lady who has been around the kitchen more than a few times.
I love LOVED her on the Great British Bakeoff show. Somehow it was just not the same after she left. She brought a sense of class to the show.
This recipe comes from her book, Mary Berry's Baking Bible, which contains over 250 classic recipes. I, quite simply, love this book, almost as much as I love her!
You know muffins you buy at the shops? They are always far too big, far too sweet and far too expensive for what you are getting.
More cake than muffin, more often than not, they truly are disappointing. When I want a muffin, I want a muffin, and when I want cake I want cake.
These muffins are muffins, pure and simple. Not too sweet. Not too large. Beautifully textured. But then again, I would expect nothing less from Mary Berry.
I was very intrigued by the manner in which these were put together. You whisk together self rising flour and baking powder and then you drop in butter, which you rub into the flour with your fingertips.
Just until the mixture resembles fine dry breadcrumbs. I have done this often for making cakes, but never for muffins. Usually muffins use melted butter or oil.
Once you have the butter rubbed in you add lemon zest and sugar. I was tempted to use Dorie Greenspan's method of rubbing the lemon zest into the sugar, but for this first time baking these muffins I thought I would go with Mary's method.
She uses caster sugar which is a finely granulated sugar. In the UK their granulated sugar is much more coarser than ours in North America. It is perfectly fine to just use granulated sugar in these in North America.
It is pretty much the same in texture as caster sugar.
Its funny how things like something as simple as sugar, or flour for that matter, can differ greatly from one country to the next. In the UK, they mostly recommend caster sugar for baking.
That is because their granulated sugar is so coarse that it doesn't melt properly in recipes. If you have ever had a cake come out of the oven with a speckled top, that's because your sugar was too coarse and not creamed in well enough.
The purpose of creaming is to almost melt the sugar into the butter so that doesn't happen. For these, it didn't seem to matter.
In fact, in the UK, more often than not, the sugar is just stirred into the dry ingredients, like in scones for instance. I thought that totally odd, but it also totally works, especially if you are using caster sugar.
As with any muffin recipe, the wet ingredients are stirred into the dry ingredients, just until they are combined. That is what gives them their beautiful texture.
In a cake, you want a finer texture and crumb. Muffins are meant to be much more rustic. They are classified as a quick bread not a cake, and should eat as such.
Oh how I wish I had had some wild blueberries to use in these muffins. I can only think how lovely they would be with wild berries.
Alas, my blueberry picking days are over. When I was a child we spent many a hot day in August picking blueberries for my mother. It was hot, back breaking work.
Unlike high bush berries, wild blueberries grown close to the ground. You need to crouch when you are picking them. I cannot crouch these days due to arthritis.
But I have many fond memories of having picked them in the past. Most people here in Nova Scotia have their favorite blueberry picking territories, and are loath to share them with someone else. They do grow wild just about everywhere.
But are much more abundant in some areas than in others. When you find a prime spot you tend to stick to it and keep it to yourself. We once owned a house in Nictaux, close to the falls.
There was a gravel pit up back of us. The soil was dry and sandy and we had tons of berries, ripe for the picking. You could go out and pick every day and would have your bucket filled in next to no time.
The only problem with blueberries and the month of August is that the bears are out there picking them also. I can remember always being bear aware when picking berries as a child.
The bears are out scavenging and filling up their bellies in August for the Winter's hibernation they know lies ahead, and so you are as likely to come across a bear in the bush as you are berries. So you do need to be careful.
I am terrified of bears. Absolutely terrified.
In any case, I did not have to fight the bears for these berries I used today. They were highbush berries, not quite as sweet as the wild, but delicious nonetheless.
I took half of these over to my next door neighbor. I thought she would enjoy them.
These are a lovely muffin. Light and beautifully textured. Not too sweet, and stuffed with plenty of berries. I highly recommend!! If they are good enough for Mary, they are plenty good enough for me!
Mary Berry's Blueberry Muffins
Yield: 8
Prep time: 10 MinCook time: 25 MinTotal time: 35 Min
Moist and delicious and stuffed with sweet berries!
Ingredients
- 1 3/4 cup plus 1 TBS (250g) self rising flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 3 1/2 TBS (50g) butter, at room temperature
- 6 1/2 TBS (75g) caster sugar (fine granulated sugar)
- 3/4 cup (175g) blueberries
- the finely grated zest of one lemon
- 2 large free range eggs, beaten
- 9 fluid ounces (250ml) milk
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400*F/200*C/ gas mark 6. Butter a muffin tin really well, or line with paper liners. (I used a six cup muffin tin and 2 ramekins.)
- Measure the flour and baking powder into a bowl and give it a good stir. Drop in the butter and then rub it into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine dry bread crumbs. Stir in the lemon zest, sugar and blueberries.
- Mix the eggs and milk together and then add to the dry ingredients, stirring all together just until the mixture is combined. Its okay if the batter is a bit lumpy. In fact, this is desirable.
- Spoon the batter into the muffin cups filling them almost to the top.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until well risen and golden brown. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean and they should spring back when lightly touched.
- Leave to cool for a few minutes, then tip out onto a wire rack to cool for a bit longer.
- Beautiful served warm with a nice hot cuppa!
My brother-in-law had a birthday this week. He turned 51. When asked what he wanted for his birthday meal he had two requests, a homemade beef lasagna (with ricotta cheese) and a double chocolate cake!
I said to my sister, let me make the cake! I have the perfect recipe for it and I think he will love it. Ironically she had picked out the same recipe, so we were really on the same wave length!
One of my favorite cookbooks has always been Dish Entertains, by Trish Magwood. It is a book that was popular with my boss when I worked at the Manor, and one which I loved to cook from when she had luncheons, etc.
The recipes in it range from everyday simple to special occasions. It even won a James Beard Foundation Award, a silver Gourmand World Cookbook Award, and a Silver Cuisine Canada Culinary Book Award.
If a birthday isn't a special occasion, I don't know what is, and I knew there was an excellent chocolate cake recipe in the book. I had given my sister a copy of the book and she had ear-marked it as well. The decision was made!
According to Trish, this is a four generations old recipe. A fabulously old fashioned one-bowl chocolate cake, and perfect for family celebrations!
If turning 51 isn't a special occasion I don't know what is! This is a delicious chocolate cake filled to overflowing with fabulous chocolate flavor.
But you don't need anything special to make it, unless you count buttermilk as being special. I love anything baked with buttermilk. It has the ability to render any baked good incredibly moist, and is great for marinating chicken in prior to cooking it.
It makes great biscuits and pancakes, waffles, scones, etc. And it makes for one very fabulous chocolate cake!
This recipe doesn't require fancy chocolate either, no chocolate chips, etc. or pudding mixes, etc. Just plain old cocoa powder.
Just make sure you use cocoa powder and not chocolate drinking powder or hot cocoa mix. Plain old baking cocoa powder. I use Fry's cocoa powder. Its the only cocoa powder that I have ever used in North America. Its the best as far as I am concerned.
One year my sister and I both entered baked whoopie pies, using my whoopie pie recipe into our respective county fairs. She was in a different county to I. We both won the Fry's Cocoa Powder blue ribbon of excellence for them!
What fun that was for both of us to come first! We got a cash prize, a ribbon and a set of oven mitts and an apron! Those were the days!
This lovely cake uses the one bowl method. What that means is that all of the dry and wet ingredients are mixed together in one bowl. There is no separating of the eggs and beating them separately. No creaming of the fats and sugars, etc.
Just look at how lovely and moist it is. (No, I did not take the cake over there with a piece missing, lol I took it over whole and then brought a piece home to take a photo of the slice!)
You can tell that this cake is not only moist but is filled with a rich and chocolatey flavor! It makes either a nine or an 8 inch double layer cake. But don't worry if you don't have a lot of people to feed.
This chocolate cake recipe can also very easily be halved to make only one layer, which makes it perfect for the smaller family as well. You can also bake it as cupcakes!
Not only is it the perfect celebration cake, but it is a fast and easy, reliable cake to bake as a last minute dessert when you need one!
Included also is a fabulous chocolate frosting recipe, which fills and covers the cake quite generously! It, too, only needs simple ingredients. Melted butter, cocoa powder, confectioner's sugar and some strong brewed coffee.
No worries however, if you are not a coffee drinker like I am not, or if you are making the cake for children. You can substitute buttermilk in its place.
I found I needed a bit more liquid with the icing than she suggested. So just play with it and if you think the icing is not fluffy or creamy enough, beat in extra liquid by the TBS. My icing was a bit like play dough until I did this.
I was quite concerned because I didn't have any more icing sugar to make another icing, so just persevere and add more liquid a small amount at a time until you get the right consistency.
She also seemed to think it made an extra large amount of icing and that there would be some leftover. I found this to be exactly the right amount needed for both filling and coating the cake.
All in all, everyone really enjoyed this fabulously tasty and moist chocolate cake, especially Dan! I decorated it with sprinkles that reminded us of the stars, planets and moons. He is a sci-fi buff!!
If you are looking for an excellent chocolate cake for whatever reason, look no further. This one fits the bill perfectly on all counts! I am even betting that you will have everything you need to make it in your cupboard right now! Let the baking begin!
Buttermilk Chocolate Cake
Yield: Serves 8 to 10
Prep time: 12 MinCook time: 40 MinTotal time: 52 Min
This old fashioned one-bowl chocolate cake is meant to be shared and is the perfect way to celebrate any occasion. Delicious and moist. You can cut the recipe in half and bake in one pan for a single layer cake.
Ingredients
For the cake:
- 2 large free range eggs
- 2 cups (480ml (approximately, see instructions) buttermilk
- 2 cups (280g) all purpose plain flour
- 2 cups (390g) granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup (55g) cocoa powder, sifted (not chocolate drinking mix)
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup (240ml) vegetable oil
- 2 tsp vanilla
For the icing:
- 1/2 cup (120g) butter, melted
- 1/2 cup (55g) cocoa powder, sifted (not chocolate drinking mix)
- 4 cups (520g) icing sugar, sifted
- 1/4 cup (60ml) strong brewed coffee (or buttermilk if making for children)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350*F/180*C/ gas mark 4. Generously butter 2 nine or eight-inch round cake tins and line the bottoms with some parchment paper. Set aside.
- Measure the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a bowl. Give them a quick whisk together.
- Place the eggs into a measuring cup and add buttermilk only to make 2 cups (480ml) in total. Add the oil and vanilla. Slowly beat this into the dry ingredients on low speed to combine. Once combined, increase the speed to medium and beat for 2 minutes.
- Divide the batter between both prepared layer tins.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until the top springs back when lightly touched, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Transfer the tins to a wire rack and cool completely in the pans.
- Once cold, run a sharp knife around the edge, unmold and remove the paper from the bottoms of the cakes.
- To make the icing, measure all of the ingredients into a large bowl and beat together until creamy. You may need a bit more liquid to get the proper consistency.
- Place one layer of cake on a plate. Spread a portion of frosting over top. Place the other layer on top of that and then proceed to ice the whole cake.
- Decorate or not as desired. Cut into wedges to serve.
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