Scones in Pictures...

Last year I wrote about Lemonade Scones.
Yes, indeed they were very yummy.
I have however since then, been whipping up a simpler version that I wanted to share. With pictures. Documenting my love for not only scones but also photo editing using Pixlr. This recipe is ridiculously simple and the scones so tasty, it'll have you making them all the time. So here goes:

Set your oven to 225 degrees.
The idea is to have two parts dry ingredients to one part wet so decide on a mug you'd prefer and stick with it (ie. it doesn't have to measure 1 cup in the metric sense)

Put two mugs of flour in a large bowl,

add a handful of currants.

Chop 100 grams butter and put in the mug.

Fill mug to half way with boiling water, leave butter to melt...

 When melted, top up with milk. Add to the flour.

Mix into a ball and knead lightly. The dough should be slightly sticky.

Push down onto a floured tray and cut but don't separate,

 Scones need each other to rise. Bake.

Eat with Orange Marmalade... (Recipe found here)

Enjoy. Not only the scones but the compliments you'll receive from your friends :-)

Wondering About Banana Bread...

I'm going to make a new list. It's going to be titled: Seven Wonders of The Baking World and wonder number one is going to be, café style banana bread - I really WONDER how they make it!!?

It's not like I haven't been doing anything lately, but this has been one of life's mysteries for me for quite some time now. Why is café style banana bread six hundred times better than the kind you make at home? Annoying. And why does every single café seem to use the same recipe?!#! Even more annoying. What is in it? Where are they getting it from? How do they get it so sticky, dense and moist? Do you think that I've actually asked anyone...? That's a rhetorical question by the way and the answer is no - it's far better just to sit here and speculate on Blogger.

I have tried a few different recipes over the recent past that professed to be banana bread but I remained somewhat unmoved and dissatisfied by the results - they certainly did not produce the banana bread that I knew. So I did the trusty 'café style banana bread' search and found myself here. I was excited. Then last Friday I gathered my nuts and bananas, which I'd been storing in the freezer (a great way to keep your over-ripe bananas by the way)...

I left them to brown for a while (apparently a trick of the café).

I mixed all the dry ingredients and all the wet in separate bowls...

Then mixed them together and baked for a little over the specified time and ended up with this:

Yes, it is very loaf like and was quite tasty but sadly it just was not like at the café!

Yesterday, while perusing through a small pile of recipe books I came across Apple & Banana Bread so I thought I'd give it a whirl, having done a quick scan of the ingredients and realising I had everything, we got started.

Apples, bananas and cinnamon basking in the morning sunlight...

As my son mixed away, creaming the butter and sugar and then adding the eggs slowly I couldn't really see much difference between a cake recipe and this one and I could feel wonder number two coming on.... what is the difference apart from the obvious shape of the pan. This wondering was followed by more not-so-trusty google searching, yielding many differences of opinion and thus I have been left, still wondering.

On a brighter note, the bread cake turned out nicely - it's lovely and sweet with the apple.

Linking up with Jodie The Haby Goddess

   

Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake, Baker's Man...

My late Nana, Thelma Doris was forever making scones. I spent a lot of time at her place as a child and to commence each visit our ritual went something like this: Nana would say "Shall we make some scones dear?" and I'd nod, wide eyed in agreement and anticipation while following her toward the back of the house to a dark poky kitchen. There we'd huddle around the small formica topped table where she'd mix and knead lightly... I'm not sure I partook in much of the actual making part, however I vividly remember the result: a warm batch of lightly crusted scones wrapped in a clean tea towel.
It wasn't until recently that my love for scones really came about and I learned while on a trip back to my home land that Nana used to make her scones with lemonade. (My four-year-old was very impressed by this little factoid due to his current infatuation with the stuff.) So I've been very busy experimenting and investigating and made these over the weekend:

Lemonade Scones with Dates

The recipe is:
2 cups self raising flour
1 tsp mixed spice
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup lemonade
Bake at 220 degrees for 10 mins

The things I love about scones (apart from their taste) is that they are super quick, extremely easy to make, can be very healthy - made with wholemeal flour sans lemonade! And you normally have all the ingredients on-hand (for a simple version anyway) to make a batch when needed... Which for me is most mornings!

Scone tips:
+cook close together to help rise
+don't over handle
+pat the dough lightly - instead of kneading
+wrap in tea towel when cooked to give thin soft crust
+although wholemeal is a healthy option I find that white flour seems to produce a lighter scone...


So Nana, where ever you may be, I hope you're watching... Because I know how thrilled you'd be to see that all that scone making finally rubbed off...

Linking up with Jodie The Haby Goddess