Combine flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a bowl. Then add cubes of cool butter and cut the butter into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender as shown here.
Beat Eggs In Separate Bowl In a separate bowl, beat two eggs until they're light and airy. You'll need a third egg reserved for later — you're going to use it to brush the scones with egg white before baking.
Add Cream and Stir to Combine Add ½ cup heavy cream and mix until thoroughly combined. Have a bit more cream reserved in case you need to moisten the dough later. You could use water to moisten, but where's the creaminess in that?
Add Wet Ingredients To Dry As soon as you add the wet ingredients, you'll activate the baking powder, so you're kind of on the clock. Stir until the dough just comes together, and add ½ cup of dried currants.
Turn Dough Out Onto Floured Board Press together until the dough barely holds together. You don't want to overwork it at all, or the dough will become too tough.
Bring Dough Together, But Don't Overwork If you need a bit more liquid to moisten it, you can add it now — about a tablespoon at a time, just enough so that the dough holds together.
Roll Dough Out About An Inch Thick You can dust your rolling pin with a bit of flour to keep it from sticking. And once again, don't overwork the dough or your scones will taste like little blobs of leather.
Cut Into Rounds With Fluted Pastry Cutters This is the fun part — it's like playing with Play-Doh. It's possible that the main reason I became a chef was to be able to use fluted pastry cutters.
Brush Tops With Egg White Here's where we use that third egg we set aside earlier. Separate the yolk from the white and paint the tops of the scones with egg white, just enough to make them glossy.
Bake At 400°F For 15 Minutes Scones should be eaten as soon after baking as possible. The perfect scone should be hot enough to melt butter without quite burning your mouth when you bite into it. |
發表於 2010-9-18 10:35 AM
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