Butler Shiina shares a recipe for wonderful scones, laid out in careful, numbered steps — follow them and you can enjoy an authentic taste at home.
Sir, my lady, thank you as always for reading. This is Butler Shiina. Today I bring you what might be called an essential recipe for a butler: how to make wonderful scones. I introduced this once before, but today I shall set it down again, carefully, as a more fail-proof method.
Ingredients and Preparation
First, the ingredients. Cake flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, unsalted butter, an egg, and milk. That is all you need to have ready.
The greatest secret to succeeding with scones is, in fact, temperature. Keep the butter chilled in the refrigerator until the very moment you use it, and chop it finely. The bowl and worktop, too, are ideally cold if you can manage it. If the butter melts, that flaky, layered texture is lost.
The Steps to Baking
1. Put the cake flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a bowl and whisk them well together.
2. Add the cold butter and rub it in swiftly with your fingertips. Once the pieces of butter are about the size of small beans and the whole becomes crumbly, it is done. Speed is essential here.
3. In another bowl, mix the egg and milk, and add it little by little to step 2, folding as if cutting. Do not knead. Stopping while a little flouriness still remains is the secret to a light finish.
4. Turn the dough out onto the worktop, gather it gently, and roll it to about two centimetres thick. Cut with a cutter and arrange on a baking tray.
5. Brush the tops thinly with beaten egg and bake in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for fifteen to twenty minutes. When they take on a golden colour, they are done.
Split them by hand, top and bottom, while still warm, and serve with clotted cream and jam. Crisp without, moist within. At home, too, you can surely enjoy the taste of an authentic tea time. Next time, I plan to introduce another delicious recipe. Do look forward to it.
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