Make Me Cook

I’ll need to give you folks a little history behind this recipe posting. I recently started a blog over at this site called VOX. It’s been the place where I’ve been putting my daily ramblings, okay so sometimes not daily but fairly regularly. I wanted to keep my food blog clear of me spouting off about jerkholes who play midnight golf and break out car windows… stuff like that.

So a little while back I had mentioned that I’ve been recently suffering from horrible migraines. I’ve never had headaches in my life up until about this past year and a half… migraines suck dirty butts, plain and simple. I can usually feel when they are first coming on, that dull constant pain right behind the eyes and little white flashes, so this last time I thought “I’m going to make scones!” Why? I don’t know. For some weird reason I thought if I made scones then my world would be right again.

Well guess what…. I made those scones and before I finished the first one my migraine was gone. Since I customarily take two Excedrin Migraine I thought it was best to have two scones as well. Just to be safe though…. I had three, better safe (and stuffed!) then sorry right? So I made a little post over at VOX to share with those who had given me all kinds of advice to help in getting rid of migraines, and I totally spaced off putting the recipe over here! I will make myself available for floggings later.

So I posted the picture up over at my photo sharing on flickr and uploaded it to my stock portfolio too. Since posting it at those two places I’ve been asked for the recipe from countless folks. So I decided to post it here, since this is where everyone comes to find my recipes. So I must share with you my baking therapy… Lovely hot scones!

Kelly’s Scone Medicine
2 cups/280 grams Flour
1/4 cup/50 grams White Sugar
2 teaspoons/10 grams Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon/2 grams Salt
1/3 cup/76 grams Cold Butter (cut into chunks)
1 large (that’s metric large too) Egg (lightly beat that sucker)
1/2 cup/120 ml Whole Milk

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).

You can put down a piece of parchment on a cookie sheet if you want to prevent the scones from sticking, but you don’t have to if you don’t have it. Just make sure to remove the scones from the ungreased cookie sheet while they are still hot.

Okay the mixing part.

Combine all your dry ingredients into a bowl. Mix it up… see that was easy! Okay now take that cold butter and toss it in that dry stuff you got there and use a pastry blender to “cut” the butter into the dry mixture. If you don’t have a pastry blender you can use forks or two knives. Don’t do this in a food processor or with an electric blender, that will overwork your dough and you will end up with doorstops instead of flakey scones. We don’t want that do we.

Okay, keep cutting that butter into the dry stuff until it looks like a coarse meal, like little balls of butter and flours about half the size of a green pea. Now we are ready for the egg and milk action. Combine your slightly beaten egg with the milk, mix it up good until the milk turns all pale yellow then dump it into the flour and butter mixture. Using a large spoon (of the wooden variety is my preferred spoon) start mixing in the milk and egg. Don’t over mix, you are going to JUST mix it to get the flour stuff all moist. This dough will be sticky, so don’t fret.

Divide it up into 3 equal portion. Take one portion out and put it onto a well floured board. You are going to knead it about 5 or 6 times. The trick is when you press your dough flat, flip it over then fold, then press flat again. Repeat that the 5 or 6 times I mentioned. What you are doing is folding the floured side together, this is what makes those lovely flakey layers you are after.

Now make that kneaded dough into a little mound about 5 inches (12.7cm) in diameter. The center of your little mound should be slightly higher than the outside rim, so it’s kind of like a dome. Now take a big knife and cut it into half and then half again so you have 4 (and that is 4 for you metric users out there) equal pieces.

Now what I like to do is brush the tops of my scones with milk then sprinkle a pinch of turbinado sugar onto them. You don’t have to do this, you can leave them plain if you want.

Stick them on your cookie sheet and bake them for about 10-12 minutes until they are golden brown. Top them with butter, clotted cream or marscapone cheese with fruit preserves. YUM!

Now go make and take your medicine!