Lemonade Scones - CBC 3

Ever have one of those days in the kitchen where everything you attempt turns into a complete mess? That's how my attempts to make scones always end up ... so you can imagine my horror when my brother-in-law requested some scones and jam for afternoon tea yesterday. Eek!

Tomorrow is my Mother-In-Laws birthday. She got given some bad news by the hospital last week when her test results from before Christmas finally got delivered so the whole family pulled out all the stops to help her celebrate yesterday. My brother-in-law flew up from London for the weekend and all the grand kids and their girlfriends turned up for a surprise lunch and she was given a present of a trip to Dublin at Easter, she has always wanted to visit Dublin but never managed to get there. She had a good day ;0)

After lunch we all went back to Sis-In-Laws house for dessert / afternoon tea. I was mortified when she told everyone that I was 'pastry chef' for the day. The scones were lopsided and didn't look at all scone like, the brownies burnt (while I was faffing about with the rotten scones!) and the birthday cake dried up! Grrrrr. At least there was still some jam in the fridge and the Passionfruit Curd didn't curdle!

I thought I would try a 'foolproof' recipe for the scones and kill two birds with the one stone, the recipe came from Belinda Jeffery cook book Hubby gave me for Christmas and has now officially become my Cook Book Challenge number 3. Don't get me wrong, the scones tasted just fine, everyone seemed to like them and the boys didn't leave very many spare out of two batches.

Lemonade Scones

375g SR flour

160g stone ground wholemeal SR flour

75g caster sugar

1/2 tsp salt

100g dried currants or natural sultanas

250ml cream

250ml lemonade

Plain flour or milk, for topping

Jam or curd and clotted cream to serve

Preheat your oven to 200C. Line a baking tray with two layers of baking paper and set it aside.

Put both of the flours, the sugar and salt into a large bowl and whisk them with a balloon whisk so they're really well mixed together. Tip in the currants and toss them about so they're well coated in the flour. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and pour in the cream and lemonade. Stir everything together with a wooden spoon until it gets a bit too awkward and sticky to stir, then forget about the spoon and use your hands to bring the dough together. Although you have to make sure the dough is mixed, try not to overdo this as scones are better for a light touch (some cooks are such show offs!)

Tip the dough out onto a chopping board and just bring it together. Put it out into a 5cm thick rectangle - no less if you want good high scones. Dip a scone cutter or tumbler into some flour then stamp out the scones, dipping the cutter into the flour between each one.

Sit the scones fairly closely together on the prepared tray. You'll have some scraps of dough left, so gently knead them together, pat them out, and cut out more scones from this. When they're all done, either dust the tops lightly with flour or brush them with a little milk.

Bake for 20 mins or until the scones are golden. When the scones are ready, cool them briefly on a wire rack then bundle them up in a basket lined with a clean tea towel.

Makes about 18

Taken from Belinda Jeffery's 'Mix and Bake'

I found the dough to be very wet and difficult to work with. I made the first batch with sultanas and then decided to make a second batch without, the second time I dumped quite bit more flour into the mix but the end result was still very sticky and uncooperative. I didn't have any wholemeal SR flour to hand so I made both batches with ordinary SR flour. Not sure if that contributed to the difficulties or not. I will have to try this recipe again I guess ... but it will be in a little while once my self esteem has recovered lol.