Oh, yes, I said, I’ll make some scones for the English conversation class party. Scones? Easy, I’ve been making them since I was a child!
I decided to make traditional enriched scones and also some cheese scones. Because they are better made fresh, I was up just after six merrily making scones, Be-Ro recipe book to hand ingredients all lined up, oven getting to temperature, ready to rock!
I’d already made a Victoria sponge which was cooling on the rack when I got mixing the scone ingredients; all went well, rolled the dough out, cut the scones, into the oven… began to make the cheese scones, glanced through the oven door window to look at my beautifully rising scones… except they weren’t. They sat there in grim stolid shapes, unrisen, their currants glaring at me like malevolent scone eyes. I turned my back on them and went back to cutting the cheese scones, brushing them with egg and sprinkling with cheese. The fruit scones should be done by now and i took them out of the oven. They looked brown and shiny but they were as dense as some yet to be discovered dense heavy metal.
I had to put the cheese scones in and when i came to take the fruit scones of the baking tray I found that their bottoms were not only virtually uncooked but also soggy! Soggy bottomed scones? What would Mary Berry say? The cheese scones were fine, except one tray spread like biscuits and the other tray puffed up like doughnuts.
Needless to say, the fruit scones will stay at home and only the cheese scones/biscuits/doughnuts will come with me and the Victoria sponge to the party.
Lois Elsden 