latter day scones

“It takes only about 15 min­utes to pro­duce a bas­ket­ful of love­ly hot scones, feath­erlight, on the table.”

Thus begins the Aus­tralian Women’s Week­ly recipe on p. 76 of the Cook­ing Class Cook­book. Although I’ve put the scone recipe on styleisvi­o­lence before, it was per­haps not in the most digestible form. I’ll adapt it more read­ably here, since this is a recipe that I’m sure we’ll need in a pinch some­where, some­time in the future, per­haps on a driz­zly day in a Scot­tish cas­tle with good WiFi, or to impress expats at the British embassy in Algiers.

• 2 cups flour
• 2 tea­spoons bak­ing pow­der
• 1 tea­spoon salt
• 1 tea­spoon sug­ar
• 1oz (30g) but­ter
• ½ cup milk
• ¼ cup water

Pre­heat oven to 475 Fahren­heit. Mix the dry ingre­di­ents. Rub in the but­ter with the fin­ger­tips until it resem­bles fine bread­crumbs; do not over-han­dle. Pour in the milk and water and mix light­ly and quick­ly to form the dough. Turn it out onto a floured sur­face, knead light­ly and pat to a 2cm thick­ness. Cut into cylin­ders with a floured cham­pagne flute. Put the cylin­ders on a light­ly greased cook­ie sheet, packed in close, and brush with a bit of milk. Bake about 10 min­utes, or until done. While bak­ing, whip some cream and find the jam.

Make tea.