I am very excited about the baking events taking place on WordPress currently. Tandy Sinclair whose website is called “Lavender & Lime” is hosting a blogging event for International Scone Week 2021. She invited us to bake scones and link our post to hers, where she will compile the collection of scones that bloggers have submitted this year.

Please visit Tandy’s website to find the variety of scone recipes that have been collected together this year from WordPress bloggers.

International Scone Week 2021

Hosted by Tandy Sinclair @ Lavender & Lime

I don’t often make scones these days. I blame the young people – they seem to want choux pastry or cheesecake rather than traditional staples. But before the Pandemic, I used to have two or three afternoon tea parties each year, and scones with jam and clotted cream were always a feature of our little spread.

I did not want to bake the traditional plain or sultana scones I have been baking since childhood, no, I decided quite recklessly to seek out a new recipe for this event. I have a mixed report for you as a result. The recipe, which I found on the Waitrose website, appealed to me as soon as I saw it: Lemon And Stem Ginger Scones. I love lemon and I love ginger, how could this go wrong?

INGREDIENTS

225g self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting
2 tbsp caster sugar
½ tsp salt
55g unsalted butter, cubed and chilled
1 lemon, zest and 1 tbsp juice 125ml whole milk, plus extra for brushing
2 tbsp chopped stem ginger (I had stem ginger in syrup and crystallised ginger and was not sure which one to use, but in the end I chose the latter because it had a shorter expiry date)
125ml whole milk, plus extra for brushing

METHOD

Preheat the oven to 200˚C, gas mark 6.

Mix the flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. I would also recommend adding a little baking powder at this point, perhaps quarter of a teaspoon. Add the cold cubed butter and, using your fingers, rub it into the dry ingredients until it reaches a breadcrumb consistency. Stir in the lemon zest and make a well in the centre.

Mix the stem ginger and lemon juice into the milk. Pour into the flour mixture and, using a knife, roughly bring together. (I felt that the dough was a little too sticky at this point, but I stuck to the recipe and the result showed that the sticky dough was just fine – the final bakes were beautifully light and fluffy.)

Knead briefly and lightly to combine, then pat out on a surface to about 2cm thick. Cut out 6cm rounds using a pastry cutter – you should make 6, re-rolling any trimmings. As the dough was so sticky, cutting the rounds became rather messy and I was not very happy with my misshapen batch that went into the oven – thus no photograph for you of the baking sheet.

Put on a lightly floured baking tray and brush with a little milk. Bake for eighteen – twenty minutes, until golden.

I will state at this point that I found the aroma of the stem ginger baking rather unpleasant, it permeated the kitchen with what resembled antiseptic cleaning agent. However…the taste of the stem ginger with the lemon is a concoction of genius. In addition as I mentioned earlier, the scone itself was light and fluffy. I think these are the best scones I have made in years, despite their misshapen appearance!

Allow to cool before splitting and spreading with clotted cream, along with either jam or lemon curd. Whatever you fancy really. I went for lemon curd because I did not want flavour to compete with the lemon and ginger in the scones.