It’s the first post of my Soggy Bottoms experience, and I thank you all for reading this in the early stages before I spiral into the depths of baking madness.
Once this is all over, I’m interested in taking a look at how quickly or slowly my enjoyment for this project plummeted with each new post.
I’m kidding.
If the rest of the bakes go as smoothly as this one, this’ll be a breeze! But I’m also a perfectionist, so it’s doubtful.
During the announcement post, I asked for the Bitchery’s opinion on what would be a good starter bake. Many of you suggested scones and after doing some research, that seemed like the safest option to ease into things.
Bake: Scones
Episode: Series 1, Episode 2
Whose challenge: Paul Hollywood
Time limit: An hour, which I felt was rather generous.
Resources: I used this Paul Hollywood scone recipe, which is the one I assumed they were given on the show. I also consulted this video to get some extra help because I found the recipe rather vague regarding some details. In the video, he’s teaching what look to be high schoolers, for which I was grateful.
Process: Now when I had previously said I didn’t own a stand mixer, I was being entirely truthful. But my bananas-lovely boss informed me that the Ladies (the often bespectacled women you see adorning the site) whispered to her that I needed one. A week later, Priscilla showed up on my doorstep.
A stand mixer isn’t necessary to make scones. However, you can bet your sweet asses that I decided to use mine anyway.
The first roadblock I noticed right away was the difference in British versus American recipes. For example, we don’t really have castor sugar and when the recipe called for butter, it didn’t specify salted or unsalted. Plus, things are mostly in metric units, which means I had to math. Or at least call upon Google to math for me.
Since the TV show is titled The Great British Bake Off, I foresee these difficulties with ingredients and proportions to be a common occurrence.
I was incredibly nervous, but the recipe went off without too much of a hitch and I completed it with around fifteen minutes to spare. I wondered if I had done something wrong; it’s possible the original challenge called for more than eight scones, though I couldn’t find a place to rewatch the episode to double check.
One thing Paul Hollywood mentioned in the video above is reusing the scone dough scraps to get more scones out of them. He said reusing it once should be fine, but trying to reuse the dough to get more scone cuts for the third time might affect the bake. He was right. In my image, you can see that some of the scones didn’t rise as high or evenly as others. The highest risen scones were from the first cut into the dough and the rather lopsided ones were from when I had balled the scraps together for a third time, rolled out the dough, and cut another one or two out.
However, I didn’t notice a difference in taste.
I don’t think I’ve eaten traditional scones before and was surprised at heavy and rich they were. Finishing one was a bit of a struggle. I also managed to find some clotted cream at my grocery store in the specialty cheese section. I’m not sure I like it. It has an odd texture and there isn’t much of a taste to me. My roommate made sure to let me know that I committed a cardinal sin, as well, by putting my jam on first, then the cream.
The batch of eight scones only lasted a few days in my apartment before being polished off and they stayed rather fresh. I did wrap them up in a towel and then placed them in a Tupperware container. The recipe was easy to follow and from start to finish, took less than an hour. I would absolutely make these again without much modification. I might leave the scones in the oven for a touch longer.
And yes, cream first, then jam.
Reading material: A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas.
Since scones are a British staple, I wanted a book set in Great Britain. I also picture scones being eaten with tea in some plush, dimly lit salon that smells of leather and has a fireplace. My raspberry preserves make a lovely complement to Charlotte’s maroon dress on the cover, too.
However, I didn’t enjoy the book as much as I thought I would. I simply don’t think I was the right audience. My nervousness and anxiety over my first recipe overshadowed the experience a little bit for me, and I was left rather surprised at how well things turned out.
With A Study in Scarlet Women, I had a similar experience, though backwards. My fellow readers enjoyed this one, including Sarah and Carrie, but I never felt that same hype and excitement others did. The baking turned out better than expected and the reading failed to capture my interest despite several glowing recommendations.
Atmospherically, though, A Study in Scarlet Women is a great pairing for munching on a scone.
And as always, you can keep track of my technical bakes in the Soggy Bottoms introductory post.
Have you made scones before? Any egregious errors on my part? What should I bake next?
The scones look great. Jam then cream in Cornwall, cream then jam in Devon, both are fine unless you’re from either of those places. If you want to branch out into savoury cheese scones are really good too! I didn’t read the first post so don’t know if you can source them but proper metric weighing scales are going to be your best friend in this! Victoria sponge might be a good place to go next, with your new mixer it should be a breeze!
I squealed for your KitchenAid. Welcome to your new life, kitchen sister.
Since I’m old and have lost all patience with fussiness, I avoid scraps and their misshapen offspring by patting dough into a semblance of a rectangle and cutting squares. (When you give doughnut dough this treatment, you can call them beignets, and people will think your laziness is fancy!)
I couldn’t get into A Study in Scarlet Women and I so wanted to because it depicts neurodivergent women, which we don’t get in fiction.
Maybe because I was listening to an audiobook? If an audiobook doesn’t grab me right away, my brain wanders. Or maybe I’m just Sherlocked out.
I’m definitely pro scone though. These look great!
Looks good Amanda! In baking you should always use unsalted butter, particularly is the recipe calls for a pinch of salt.
And congrats on the stand mixer!! Happy baking.
Castor sugar is super-fine sugar. You can find it at the grocery store in the baking aisle. It’s in packaging that looks like milk cartons. You can also make it at home by putting sugar in a food prosessor and pulsing a few times. A blender would probably work but you might have to give it a shake between pulses.
What beautiful scones! They have a great rise and they’re just right to split and stuff.
Use unsalted butter for all your baking.
Your mixer is gorgeous! Your scones look great too. Scones are one of my favorite standby recipes for having people to tea even on short notice. Having the butter room temperature to cream with the sugar is one of the things that GBBO taught me and I’m so grateful. Also, I always like to use whole milk for the texture. If you like putting things in your scones, I’ve found raisins and tart apples to be a combination that goes over well.
A scale would probably make it easier for you to follow British recipes. Most will have conventions between metric and imperial weights.
Also, scales are great and much better than volume measures.
*Throws down gauntlet*
*runs away and hides behind the sofa*
*whispers* join us on the metric side, we have cookies and no cup measures to wash up.
But in all seriousness, a cheap scale should be run less than $20 and a valid expense for this project. And who knows, you may like it better than using cups.
P.S.for most non-delicate fussy cake recipes, normal sugar will be fine. Provided you substitute by weight and not volume
At least from watching the GBBO Master classes, Paul Hollywood usually recommends unsalted butter for most of his recipes, if only so you can add salt as necessary later.
That is a gorgeous mixer!! Now I want to paint mine a pretty color. It’s white, which goes with everything, sorta, but…
I don’t think you should leave the next batch in longer, based on the color of this batch–I think they would be overdone. As mentioned above, you don’t have to cut them out. I like patting the dough into a circle and cutting wedges like a pie. Also, following directions re: ingredients (unsalted versus salted butter, for example) is nice, but I don’t think one should let not having the exact ingredients stand in the way of baking… I play fast and loose with ingredients and measurements most of the time, either because I don’t want to go shopping or to reduce fat and sugar content, and I’m usually happy with the results.
A couple years ago, my mom gave me a shiny red Kitchenaid stand mixer I think of as my equivalent of a middle aged man with a gut’s shiny sports car. Except mine is better because it can nurture with cookies and it looks so pretty and majestic on the counter.
In our first year of marriage, I told my husband I wanted a KitchenAid mixer for Christmas. So when I open the package, I find some other brand, which my husband delightedly tells me is also a food processor and a blender and something else for less than the cost of a KitchenAid. Since I love my husband, I gritted my teeth, thanked him, and stayed married. Over the years, I may have mentioned how wonderful KitchenAid mixers are while looking disparagingly at the thing that wasn’t. I think he got the message. He learned that when I specify a brand, DO NOT SUBSTITUTE. After ten years, I figured enough was enough and finally got my KitchenAid. Husband has been benefiting ever since. HEA.
@Kelly: I use superfine for any recipe calling for castor sugar. I even brought back a kilo of golden castor sugar on my last UK trip simply because I’d never seen it and anticipate magic in my next batch of shortbread.
@Linda (#8): Come out from behind the sofa, you’re speaking truth. A scale is the only accurate way to measure, full stop. If you examine the differences between one cup and another, odds are actual measurements are going to vary more than the allowable 10%. Scooping flour into a cup measure, for example, produces wildly different results than spooning and leveling off, yet both are called “cups.”
I make a double batch of scones every two weeks because my husband loves them. In this recipe, the butter is always cold because you don’t want to overwork the dough.
Amanda, I look forward to your next bakes. This is so much fun!
I’m partial to the wedge shaped scones cause you only have to pat the dough into a circle and cut into wedges. Less handling and higher rise.
One thing you didn’t mention is the kind of flour you used. “Strong white flour” in British-speak is different than American all-purpose flour. It’s higher gluten and protein content and is excellent for bread making. I recommend King Arthur Unbleached Bread flour. Good for scones and breads. If you like beautiful fluffy biscuits you need to use a southern flour like White Lily or Martha White Bleached all-purpose flour which is made with a soft wheat grown in the South and ideal for biscuits and pie crusts. Southern cooks swear by it.
Castor flour is finer grain than regular sugar and can change the amount of sugar in the recipe. Use a blender or food processor to whirl it into a finer grain and then measure it.
I work in a sewing machine dealer, and we get something similar all the time. If the husband comes in, he always wants a Singer. There is no polite way to explain what a POS machine they are now, and if the wife sent her to us, she wants a GOOD machine. I’ve settled on “Singer is the Black and Decker of sewing machines. Would you be happy if she bought you a Black and Decker drill instead of the Bosch you asked for?” It has worked every time. and my most recent husband suggested Bosch to me, I had been using Skill.
Also recommending kitchen scales. For many ingredients, its easier than trying to figure out whether they sifted or packed or whipped or fluffed or something before measuring. They also make doubling (or halving or whatever) easier because it’s just a number, not some weird volume. (have you ever tried to add 1.5 of 3/4th cup?)
How long do scones keep?
Adding my voice to the kitchen scale side! My mama has a very nice one that she’s had forever that I love using while at her house-but I was able to buy one for about $10 at Walmart and it works just fine. I do a lot of baking out of British cookbooks and weighing out ingredients is much easier than converting from metric. If I am using an American recipe I still use my measuring cups though.
Unsalted butter in baking always! Sometimes I don’t have it and I don’t want to run to the store, so I use salt and the omit the 1/4 teaspoon salt the recipe calls for but that’s just me.
Ah I love scones! And I love your stand mixer! I have the same one, only gunmetal grey. Love it.
For baking scones, I like freezing the butter and grating it into the mix.
Usually you should use unsalted butter when baking.
I agree about the kitchen scales – they are indispensable. And to eliminate ‘re-forming’ the dough, squares or rectangle are best. But then you sacrifice the perfect lovely circles.
And how did you find time for this during NaNoWriMo? Well done!
I look forward to following your Soggy Bottoms!
I inherited my mother’s digital kitchen scale, and I’m not sure how I ever managed with my old manual one! I feel the same way about my stand mixer.
Just wanted to second Joy’s comment about wedge-shaped scones. The reason scones and soda bread and some other quick breads are cut that way is to eliminate scraps and re-shaping.
@MsCellanie: Mine were eaten within three days of making them and they were still fresh then.
@Critterbee: I wish I was that coordinated! I made these last month.
I think perhaps the reason the scones were a bit heavy was the use of the lovely Priscilla. Scones need to be worked very gently by hand, mixed only until they just come together otherwise the gluten develops too much and you get heavy scones. Next time, try just using your hands and see how you go.
I’m interested in the difference between scones and what you call biscuits – they always look pretty similar when I’ve seen them on american cooking shows.
How different are they to you?
I’ve been baking scones for years from a recipe in the Betty Crocker cookbook. I’ve never used a mixer though-just a pastry cutter to cut the butter into the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. I use heavy whipping cream, European unsalted butter, and ghiradelli mini choc chips. They always come out delish and my sons love them for breakfast with lots of fruit.
@Emma: Every scone I’ve ever made or been served is nothing but a sweet (American) biscuit, which are typically plain, so you can put jam on them or meat, depending on the occasion.
FYI. As a technical baker I discovered that you need to keep a watch for teaspoons and tablespoons, they are different in the UK and you need to convert from UK to US.
Good luck!
@ Emma, there are a lot of variations on biscuits, but often they are less dense than scones. And generally less sweet. To me (Californian), they’re very different items, but maybe that’s regional?
I’ve baked both and have found both require the right “touch” and you get better with practice. I use an OXO pastry blender and only unsalted butter. Best biscuit recipe this Southern girl has found was on the King Arthur self-rising flour bag. Works with White Lily or Martha White, too.
I am jealous of Priscilla. My well-used Kitchen Aid is a white Target model bought ages ago.
As I recall, C&H makes a “baking sugar” that is basically castor sugar (might be hard to find if you’re on the East Coast), or any sugar labeled “superfine” is also equivalent. I usually do the food-processor trick, though most of the scone recipes I use have such little sugar that it doesn’t make much difference. And yes, a baking scale will make everything MUCH easier if you’re using recipes that give ingredient weights, especially when you go on to cakes. (I had really dry cakes until I switched from volume to weight to measure flour–I think Alice Medrich says in one of her books that a cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 4 to 6 ounces, which is a big difference that will affect your result!) Most of the time I do cream scones, which feel easier to me…with all butter, I tend to just have to keep working it to death because it’s so dry.
Oh yeah, you might have to look in the bar/cocktail section for superfine sugar, instead of the baking aisle…
My favorite recipe for scones is King Arthur Flour’s classic scones. I can adjust the butter and sugar to my tastes and it’s easy to add mix-ins. And I use volume because it’s traditional and you can pry my measuring cups from my cold, dead, buttery fingers. It will never be the same asking for 241 grams of sugar from your neighbor.
I have extremely negative feelings about A Study in Scarlet Women. To the point that my librarian sister took it away because I couldn’t stop yelling at the book while reading it. She refuses to recheck it out to me.
Besides the original my favorite (non-Doyle) Holmes so far is Lyndsay Faye’s “The Whole Art of Detection,” but I like popping in an episode of Shetland or Father Brown for mystery and tea too.
For future baking needs:
castor sugar is “extra fine” sugar in the US–it is easily found in most grocery stores in the baking aisle.
unsalted butter is what one is supposed to use in baking.
I prefer standard whipped cream, with or without sugar, for scones. Also I don’t know if it’s an Australian thing, but I’ve never seen a scone with the cream put on before jam.
My mum is recognised (at least in the family) as being a Really Awesome cone maker. Her trick for getting scones to rise is to put them in a tray with high sides, and put the scones quite close together. She says that way they can’t spread sideways, they can only go upwards.
She also agrees with JulieK – don’t overmix! Only mix _gently_ until the ingredients are just combined.
They look great! I love scones but have never tried a proper British recipe for them. I might have to attempt one soon. I know some of my work friends would appreciate if I brought in scones to share!
What I like on scones is (U.S.) sour cream with granulated sugar mixed in and given time to dissolve. Two to three tablespoons of sugar per 8 ounce container of sour cream.
To me, scones are denser and sweeter than biscuits. The texture differences are similar to those of pound cake and layer cake.
Honestly, I never bother with superfine sugar and everything I bake turns out fine. I find unless you are making a quite large recipe or doubling, you needn’t bother with super accurate measurements once you’ve done the recipe a few times. I weigh when making tortillas, candy (like marshmallows), some breads, some cakes, and more complicated recipes. And coffee because I am super picky about coffee.
I love my stand mixer but never use it for scones, muffins, biscuits, etc. Good old pastry blender for me.
And now I know that not only do you not have caster sugar in the US, but castor a common alternate spelling, that apparently doesn’t make anyone else think of castor oil!
@Emma – I think of biscuits as being lighter and less sweet than scones. And plainer – much less common to add dried fruits or things to biscuits (at least in the Midwest – may be a regional thing). Most of my associations with biscuits are savory – biscuits with sausages for breakfast, biscuits and gravy, chicken and biscuits.
I’ve made regular scones and Martha Rose Shulman’s whole wheat scones. I love her recipes. https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1013859-seeded-whole-wheat-scones
I’m old-school, I never use a mixer, I’m still using kitchen utensils and baking pans that belonged to my mother. Always unsalted butter and Hecker’s Unbleached flour. Also, if you have to reuse dough scraps, it’s best to let it “rest” awhile before baking, too much handling activates the gluten. This is especially true for pie crust.
I love the idea for this new series and you have totally inspired me to try scones. I’m legit making them this weekend. Yours came out looking really great! Congrats on the Kitchen Aid. I got one for my very first Mother’s Day, 10 years ago. Still works like a champ and just FYI, you can get some really amazing stickers to customize the sides of it. Mine has flames. Like this: https://www.amazon.com/Classic-Mix-Kit-Professional-interference/dp/B000LTM1XE. Also big yes on kitchen scale and measuring things in grams. Traditionaloven.com is a great site for conversions. I got hooked on gram measurements after I got Alton Brown’s book on baking and found that it really changed my baking results. Can’t wait to see what you try next!