As in France it is customary to serve fresh croissants for breakfast, so in the UK they drink morning coffee with cones. These are traditional English buns. They must be high, airy, with a golden crust and a snow-white crumb. Skones are an integral part of British national cuisine. And therefore there are many recipes for this delicious baking.
Buns are usually made sweet. But there are recipes with cheese, cottage cheese and onions. Fillings can be very different: with cinnamon, chocolate, jam, raisins, poppy seeds. Skones are served not only for breakfast, but also for tea, for the obligatory ceremony of “Fife o-clok ti”. If the buns are without filling, they must have butter and some kind of jam (conservative British people prefer strawberry or blackcurrant). Like croissants in France, in England skones are sold at any grocery store. Factory buns are edible, but gourmets do not cause much enthusiasm. It is better to try them in tea shops, the so-called "ti-room." Or bake it yourself. How? The following are basic recipes.
How to serve scones
For breakfast, these crispy buns can be enjoyed with coffee. But there is a certain Devonian ritual when the skons are served for tea. On a special table put not only buns and aromatic drink. Mandatory components of such a tea party are whipped cream and thick, not spreading jam (preferably strawberry, but you can also orange). Buns are served hot or at least warm. According to etiquette, you need to break the con across. Take one half in the left palm. With a knife in your right hand, spread the jam on the crumb, and then cream. All this is washed down with aromatic freshly brewed tea.
Classic skones without filling
Do not like to bake buns because it is long and laborious? Most likely, British housewives are in solidarity with you. Therefore, they developed a very simple recipe for buns. Classic skones can be prepared in just half an hour (this is considering the baking process). And even a younger student can handle this. This is why the skones are served hot for breakfast. Cooking them is a little more difficult than scrambled eggs. So, let's begin.
Immediately turn on the oven at 190 ° C, and cover the baking sheet with baking paper. In one bowl, mix 260 g of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder, 50 g of granulated sugar and a pinch of salt. Add 75 g of cold butter. We chop everything into crumbs with a knife or with a blender. In the second bowl, beat the egg with a fork, dilute it with 120 ml of cream (or fat milk). Add a spoonful of vanilla extract. Pour the liquid mass into the granular mixture. Quickly knead the dough. Roll it into a layer on a powdery surface. With a cookie cutter (or an ordinary glass), we cut out the circles. Put them on a baking sheet. Lubricate the surface of the slopes with cream. Bake for about a quarter of an hour until golden. Check with a toothpick for readiness. Cool on a wire rack.
Old-fashioned skones
The name of the buns speaks of their Scottish origin. The word schoonbrood simply means white bread (schoon is “clean”). Lean Scots even used peas for flour. Therefore, white wheat bread was eaten on holidays. At first, the scones recipe was supposed to be fried in oil, like donuts. But when everywhere began to use a baking powder for the test, buns began to bake. In Ireland, traditionally continue to use potato starch. Such skons are called Irish Soda Farls. They are made savory. The recipe is very similar to the previous one. Only in flour do not add sugar. The egg must be beaten with a mixer so that it doubles. Only then pour the milk. Knead, roll, cut out a bun with a tin. Lubricate the top of the products with egg yolk, diluted with a spoonful of milk. Bake at 150 degrees for half an hour.
English Skones: Raisin Recipe
On Foggy Albion, Scottish pastries were modified for dessert. As we wrote above, buns are most often cooked sweet. Fillings are possible, but this is rare. A more common option is to add various ingredients to the dough - cinnamon, poppy seeds, pieces of chocolate or dried fruits. Let's cook the scones with raisins. Making such buns is easy and simple.
First of all, pour half a glass of raisins with boiling water. When the water has cooled, rinse the swollen berries well and leave to dry on a towel. Raisins are known to tend to thin the dough. Mix the dry ingredients as described in the first recipe. The proportions are as follows: for two glasses of flour we take four tablespoons of sugar, one - baking powder, a pinch of salt and 75 grams of cold butter, which is quickly three. Eggs are not allowed to be laid according to this recipe. Instead, knead half a glass of milk with four tablespoons of fat sour cream.
Pour dry ingredients with this mixture. Stir. Pour raisins with a small amount of flour, add to the dough. It will be viscous, it will not be possible to roll it out. Tear off pieces, form balls, put on parchment, flatten. Lubricate the top with milk (you can add the yolk to it) and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 200 about With about a quarter of an hour.
Chocolate scones
This is the easiest bun recipe. The most difficult thing in it is to break into small pieces a hundred-gram standard bar of chocolate without fillers (black or milk, of your choice). With solid ingredients, we act according to the classic recipe. Mix one and a half cups of flour with fifty grams of granulated sugar. Add two teaspoons of baking powder for the dough. Three hundred grams of cold butter. Knead the crumb dough and pour the chocolate into it. And then simply add a third of a glass of orange juice! Knead, divide the dough into balls. We spread the scones on a baking sheet lined with culinary paper. And bake for a quarter of an hour at 190 degrees.
Curd Skones
The recipe for Scottish or Irish buns involves the use of not only wheat flour. Mix it (one hundred grams) with half a glass of instant oatmeal or bran. Add half a teaspoon of salt and sugar. We put powder for cookies or soda. Three 50 g cold butter. Knead all the ingredients into crumbs. One hundred and fifty grams of cottage cheese carefully knead with a spoon of paprika. If desired, chopped dry greens can be added. If the cottage cheese is too dry, breed it with two tablespoons of milk or sour cream. Knead the dough quickly. We give him a rest for about twenty minutes, so that the oatmeal swells. After that, roll out, cut out the circles and lay on a baking sheet. Such skones the recipe prescribes to bake in an oven preheated to two hundred degrees for about twenty minutes. They are served hot, and not just for tea. They can eat the broth.
Cheese cheeses
We begin to act, as in the very first recipe. Only instead of sugar, put half a teaspoon of black and hot red pepper. Add cold oil and chop everything finely with a knife. Now three in this dough fifty grams of hard cheese. Add three feathers finely chopped green onion. Fill with an incomplete glass of buttermilk, kefir or yogurt. It is not recommended to knead the dough for a long time - it hardens from this, and the scones with cheese will turn out like crackers. We lay the bun on the surface sprinkled with flour and roll one centimeter thick into the formation. Cut the circles, lay them on parchment so that they do not touch each other. Lubricate with egg, sprinkle with coarse salt or sesame seeds. We put in a preheated oven and cook at 200 about C for about twenty minutes.
Skones with filling
Occasionally you can meet such buns. These slopes are made with a filling that does not very thin the dough. Take three or four apples, cut the peel, peel the fruit boxes. Rub the pulp, mix it with sugar and cinnamon. We will replace the classic sweet dough on the skones. We tear off a piece from the kolobok, knead in a hand in a cake, put a spoon of filling, wrap it again in a ball. Such buns are baked in a preheated oven at 190 degrees for half an hour. You can not bother with the filling, but just knead the apples with the dough.
Honey Scones
Everything is clear here. We take dry ingredients and oil in the same proportions as for sweet British skones. Knead the crumbs with your fingers. In another bowl we combine two hundred grams of yogurt and 60 g of honey. A dairy product can be anything: neutral, with fruit additives, with bran. Buns will reflect the taste and aroma of yogurt. Although honey also plays a role. Unlike all previous recipes, this dough needs long kneading. We roll it into a layer. We compose three times. Roll out again. Cut the buns. We bake them in a hot oven at 220 degrees for about ten minutes.