Currant cream scones
This recipe, oh man. Back in the days before my Mister, there was another. And on the weekends when I would bake these scones for him, wonderful things happened. He (and his roommate) would descend on the kitchen like their own mini plague of locusts, intent on devouring everything that could be seen before them.
In fact, every single time I have baked these scones, everyone goes bonkers. This is an old fashioned full flavored creme covered and creme flavored English scone. Good grief, it is tasty.
I will say that my favorite bit with regard to this recipe has been to add the creme on top as a wash before baking. It is actually a very important step. It does amazing things. Between that and interchanging dried fruit with whatever floats my boat in that particular moment, these scones are just second to none.
And easy! Oh my goodness, this recipe is so easy that it is just embarrassing. You expect to have to create some terrible complex recipe to get this flavor and no. Just a simple toss and mix. The recipe from the book goes into this nice complex explanation at the end as to how to make a circle of dough and how to cut out pie shaped wedges and so on and so forth. After making them a kazillion times, I toss the dough down and whack it into the shapes I want. No fuss, no muss. And the scones still come out tasting divine.
Definitely try your hand at these as soon as you can. You might just find that you end up getting requests to make them more often. And once that happens, you are golden. Make a fresh pint of fruit compote and bake a batch of scones and you have an instant gift basket that will smell good enough to drive people wild!
Don’t be afraid to play with this recipe, once you feel comfortable with it. I have and the scones have never suffered.
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter, cut into 10 pieces
3/4 cup currants
2 large eggs, well beaten
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon heavy cream
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
Sift flour, baking powder, 1 tablespoon of the sugar and the salt into a mixing bowl. Add butter and work into flour mixture with fingertips until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add currants and toss.
Make a well in the flour mixture and add eggs and 1/2 cup of the cream. Mix with a wooden spoon until the dough begins to clump together, then knead into the bowl for about 30 seconds; do not overwork dough.
Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and halve. Form each half into a ball and flatten to form a circle about 1/4 inch thick, and 5 inches in diameter. cut each circle into 8 pie shaped wedges. Place wedges about an inch apart on a lightly buttered baking sheet. Brush tops with remaining cream and sprinkle lightly with remaining sugar. Bake in the center of oven for 12 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned.
This recipe came from one of my ultra-uber favorite cookbooks in the world; Crabtree & Evelyn Cookbook: A Book of Light Meals and Small Feasts
Yes, Crabtree & Evelyn, of the toiletries fame!
You can still get copies for outrageously cheap on Amazon (I just looked it up. Thirty four cents for an outstanding cookbook? Wild!):
I am still just in shock over the price. Good grief. Thirty four cents. Listen, grab multiples and gift them for Christmas! This is just an incredible cookbook, and I’ll even start posting a few more of the extremely successful recipes that I have used over the years. I don’t know if the book is in print officially anymore, particularly since Crabtree & Evelyn downsized the comestibles portion of their sales. But if it is, indeed, out of print, all the more reason to snap this up!
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