Strawberry Scone Cake

Summer arrived in Edinburgh today - I even made it into short sleeves!  Poor old Hubby is suffering with a cold though [ahem : Man Flu!] and didn't get to enjoy the great outdoors at all.  Summer had to be brought indoors for him so after dinner (a BBQ with lots of new recipes to share with you over the coming days!) I made this Strawberry Scone Cake.

Taking pride of place on the front cover of the latest issue of Good Food Magazine and has made my mouth water every single time I've looked at it but I promised myself I'd wait until British strawberries were in season before I would make it.  And guess what?!?!? I found some British strawberries today - it was meant to be!  Still very early in the season I know, and yes I know that I could buy a punnet of the Spanish Strawberries that is twice the size for the same price but they smelt so good!  And in the end they ended up tasting even better ;0)

Strawberry Scone Cake
225g SR flour
Pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
50g cold butter, diced
42g golden caster sugar
142ml buttermilk
4 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
Topping
200ml double cream
Icing sugar
Vanilla extract
5 tbsp berry jam
Strawberries

Heat the oven to 220C/fan 200C.  Put the flour, salt, baking powder and butter into a food processor and pulse until you can't feel any lumps of butter.  Pulse in the sugar.

Gently warm the buttermilk, milk and vanilla in a pan.  Using your largest bowl, quickly tip in some of the flour mix, followed by some of the buttermilk mix, repeating until everything is in the bowl.  Use a knife to quickly mix together to form a dough - don't over mix it.

Push the dough into a floured 20cm sandwich tin, smoothing the top, and bake for 20 mins until cooked.  Once cool, top with double cream that has been whipped with a little icing sugar and vanilla extract.  Drizzle with berry jam (I omitted this part as I didn't have any) and pile some halved strawberries on top.  Dust everything with icing sugar.

Serves 10 (if you are lucky!)
Good Food Magazine, June 2010

For someone who struggles to make scones,this cake was very successful - yippee!  And it tasted like summer in cake form!  About the only thing I would do differently next time is to grate some chocolate over the top in place of the icing sugar.