Chef Shane Smith joins us every week to give some tips on baking for our Little Baker's preparing for The Big Irish Bake with The Children's Health Foundation
For more on the Big Irish Baker go here
To see more from Shane go here:
Top Tips When Making Scones
- Use good quality ingredients.
- Don't soften your butter. Cold butter makes scones rise higher.
- Cut your butter into cubes, this helps with mixing.
- Measure your ingredients
- Avoid using a food processor to mix scones, making them by hand leads to better results.
- Add just enough buttermilk or milk to make the dough stick together.
- Its ok to knead the scone dough. Kneading it strengthens the gluten so your scone won't crumble when baked. If you do knead the dough, you must allow the scones to rest at room temperature for 20 minutes before baking.
- Dip your cutter in flour and cut straight down and don’t twist, this stops the scones from going lopsided when baking.
- Insure your scone is about 2” in height.
- When egg washing the scones before baking – only egg wash the top and not the sides. Egg washing the sides stops them from rising as well.
- Make sure your oven is fully preheated before baking the scones.
- Scones need a hot oven so bake at 200C/180C fan.
- Allow them to cool slightly before adding jam, butter, or cream.
Raspberry White Chocolate Scones
Serves: 8
Prep: 10 mins
Cooking: 20-25 minutes
Scones
- 450g self-raising flour
- 85g caster sugar
- pinch salt
- ½ tsp baking powder
- 120g butter
- 1 medium egg
- 220ml buttermilk
- Egg wash - 1 egg whisked
- 40g white chocolate chips
- 80g frozen raspberries
Glaze
- 200g icing sugar
- 30ml water
Method
- Preheat your oven to 200C/180C fan.
- Line a baking tray with parchment, and set aside.
- Into a mixing bowl, add the flour, salt, caster sugar, baking powder, and butter.
- With your fingertips, mix to form a sandy texture.
- To this, add the chocolate chips and mix.
- Make a well in the centre and add the buttermilk & egg.
- Mix to form a dough.
- Add the frozen raspberries and mix through.
- Turn out onto a floured surface and shape into a circle roughly 2” in height.
- Cut into 8 wedges and place each one on a tray or use a 2” round cutter to cut the scones.
- Egg wash and place in the preheated oven and bake the wedges for 25 mins or the smaller round scones for 12-14 minutes.
- Remove and allow to cool.
- To make the glaze, simply whisk the icing sugar and water together, drizzle this over the cooled scones, and enjoy.
