Tall and fluffy, soft in the center and just slightly sweet, these British scones are more similar in texture to American-style biscuits.
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00:00Hey everyone, it's Tia in the Delish Kitchen studios.
00:03Welcome to Techniques with Tia,
00:05the show where I teach you essential kitchen skills
00:08to up your cooking game.
00:10Today, we are gonna be making
00:11one of my absolute all-time favorites, British scones.
00:16These essential tea time treats
00:19are pretty similar to American biscuits
00:22and they are darn tasty.
00:25Let's get started.
00:26To make our scone dough, the first thing that we're gonna do
00:33is combine all of our dry ingredients in the bowl here.
00:36So we have flour, all-purpose, some granulated sugar,
00:40some baking powder, and quite a bit of salt.
00:44We're gonna give these a whisk
00:46just to make sure that all of that leavener
00:48is evenly incorporated before we start to work in our butter.
00:53Now, I have here some cold cubed butter.
00:56It's very important that the butter is cold
00:59because all of those tiny pockets of butter
01:03are going to release steam
01:05and that steam is gonna push up those layers in the scone
01:08and help them rise.
01:10I like to rub my butter in by hand.
01:12You want these flat shards, it's important.
01:15We're not looking for pulverization and little chunks.
01:18We're looking for some chunks, some shards,
01:22some other irregular pieces that I don't know the name of.
01:25This is just kind of fun to get in and feel the dough
01:28or the butter-flour mixture, if you will.
01:31This is the other thing.
01:32When you use your hands, you can find
01:35and purposefully squash the big pieces that are left.
01:39And like, there's one, done, squashed.
01:42And as the chunks are flattened,
01:44you can start more like rubbing,
01:47which is the step toward getting them
01:49just into those finer, finer, finer pieces that you want.
01:52If at any point you start to feel the butter getting greasy,
01:55stop.
01:56Throw the bowl in the fridge or the freezer
01:59for like five minutes, okay?
02:00You want it to stay cold.
02:02If it gets warm, it's not gonna work well.
02:04Now it's time for the wet ingredients.
02:06So here we have an egg.
02:08I'm just gonna crack this into the bowl,
02:10give it a whisk, and then I'm gonna add it to our milk.
02:13Into the milk, and just give that a nice little whisk.
02:21We're gonna make a well in the center of our dry,
02:26just like that.
02:27And then we are going to pour this wet right in
02:33to the middle, just like that.
02:34The well is the best way to initiate even incorporation,
02:38if that makes sense, because now we're gonna take the fork
02:41and we're gonna just go whoop, whoop,
02:43and just start filling in the pool in the middle.
02:46And it's gonna come to the outside
02:49and it's just gonna mix and incorporate better.
02:53You'll see a lot of old recipes that say to make a well.
02:56If you ever wondered why, that's it.
02:58Use the fork and almost fluff it if you can.
03:01The secret to the best scones is not overworking the dough.
03:08And that's why we're using a fork,
03:10because the fork will help to prevent that.
03:12Another trick to not overworking the dough
03:13is knowing when to stop.
03:15So at this point, there's still some flour flying around,
03:20but we've got a shaggy dough.
03:22And at this point, I would say stop.
03:24This is the time to pour it out onto the work surface
03:27and start to fold.
03:28♪♪
03:33Gonna just lay down a little bit of flour
03:35to keep it from sticking to the board, nice and even.
03:38Very gently.
03:40And yes, it looks a little bit all over the place.
03:43It's fine.
03:44It's going to incorporate, I promise.
03:47Form it with your hands very carefully
03:49into a rough rectangle and pat it.
03:51Pretend like it's a homogenous dough.
03:54Humor it, okay?
03:55And then you're gonna take the top
03:58and fold it in half like a letter.
04:00It's gonna crumble apart.
04:01Again, humor it.
04:03Pretend.
04:04Form it back.
04:06And then give it a turn 90 degrees like that.
04:10Starting with high scone dough
04:12is the secret to high scones.
04:14If you find that it's sticking for some reason,
04:17you can use a bench scraper.
04:19If you have one, it's a great tool to help you with this.
04:23So you're just gonna keep folding it and turning it.
04:30Just like this.
04:31What you're looking for is this, essentially.
04:36Where you still see some breakages,
04:39but it is looking like a cohesive thing
04:42that is holding together.
04:49Another key to the rise.
04:50This is crucial.
04:52You want a metal biscuit cutter, okay?
04:56This one's two and a half inches.
04:58That is traditional size for a British scone.
05:01So that's what I do.
05:02We're gonna take our scone cutter.
05:03We are going to dip it in that flour.
05:07And then we are going to press evenly
05:10and cleanly and neatly into the dough.
05:16We are not, repeat, say it with me, everybody.
05:20We are not going to twist as we go down, okay?
05:24If you twist, you will actually lock the dough
05:27and then it won't rise.
05:29And you'll end up with scones that are like,
05:31or just don't rise at all.
05:33So not good.
05:35After you've cut,
05:37the key is to mess with the sides as little as possible.
05:42I like to lift it like this,
05:44take it directly to the baking sheet
05:46and release it on the baking sheet.
05:48Touch as little as possible.
05:50Now, as you cut, you wanna get them close,
05:53but you don't wanna be cutting off edges.
05:55Again, if you cut off edges,
05:58like if you overlap a already cut edge,
06:01again, you ruin your beautiful rise.
06:03So just be aware.
06:07Am I making this sound super hard?
06:08I hope not.
06:09It's not hard.
06:10It's just, there are tricks to get the perfect result
06:13that looks like it came out of a great tea room in London.
06:16And I want you to know them
06:18so you can make them just like that too.
06:20These four that are on the baking sheet
06:22are the best of the batch.
06:23They are the pick of the litter, so to speak.
06:25We're not gonna get such gorgeous perfection
06:28from what's here,
06:29but the way that we work with what's here
06:32can help us get pretty darn close.
06:34So just push the dough bits together.
06:38And then we're gonna go ahead and roll it out.
06:40And I'm gonna show you how to roll it out.
06:42I'm gonna show you how to roll it out.
06:44I'm gonna show you how to roll it out.
06:46I'm gonna show you how to roll it out.
06:47I'm gonna show you how to roll it out.
06:49Together, just like this.
06:52Again, we are not disturbing the layers
06:55that we have built up.
06:56We're just shoving them together to create a new mass.
07:00Looks a little bit like, I don't know,
07:03some natural crater disaster or something,
07:05but you are going to pinch the top together
07:09to help it come together into homogenous.
07:13And don't be afraid to just kind of like push it together.
07:17And if it's taller than an inch, that's fine.
07:20You can pat it out again.
07:20We are trying to preserve all of the layers
07:22that we've already built up.
07:24And here's a trick.
07:26If the top doesn't look amazing,
07:30and you're like, I bet the bottom is smoother,
07:31you can also flip this thing over.
07:34Yeah, like that.
07:35That's probably smoother.
07:37Little bit floury, but smoother.
07:39So at this point, pat out to an inch again.
07:44And repeat.
07:50One more nicely cut out one.
07:53And then, if you still have dough
07:57that you can't get to like a cuttable form,
08:00I will like sometimes just like roll it.
08:02I call it the snake one.
08:04Just kind of roll it.
08:05Or you could call it rosettes, that sounds nicer.
08:08And ta-da, you bake that one too.
08:11And it's delicious.
08:13We are gonna throw these babies in the oven
08:15right off the bat.
08:16But before we do that, we are going to egg wash them.
08:19So here I have the egg wash.
08:22It's just one whole egg whisked up
08:24with just a little pinch of salt.
08:26The salt's key because it actually helps
08:29to release those proteins in the egg and loosen them up,
08:32which gives you a more even egg wash.
08:35A gentle touch, and you're good to go.
08:38And then, we're gonna do the egg wash.
08:40So we're gonna do an even egg wash.
08:41A gentle touch, a light hand.
08:45We want even coverage.
08:47We do not want dripping.
08:50We are gonna bake these babies
08:51at 400 degrees for 15 minutes.
09:04These look so good.
09:06Now, you wanna, when you break a scone,
09:08there will be a natural break,
09:09and that's what you wanna get.
09:11Like that.
09:12Oh, so delicious.
09:14You can top your scones with anything that you like.
09:17I like clotted cream and raspberry jam.
09:19So we're gonna do that today.
09:22Also, point of contention, I like my jam seeded.
09:26Other people might disagree.
09:33Oh, isn't she beautiful?
09:35Oh, isn't she beautiful?
09:40Mm-mm.
09:41It's buttery, and it's light, and it's fluffy.
09:45You get that tang of the clotted cream,
09:47the sweetness of the jam.
09:49So good.
09:51If I was alone right now,
09:53I would be housing this whole thing.
09:54I hope you give these scones a try.
09:56They make my day every time I make them,
09:58and I know they're gonna make yours too.
10:00For this and other technique-forward recipes,
10:02stick around on delish.com.