Perfect Mini Scones

Ingredients

2½ cups self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup butter, cut into cubes
3 tbsp white sugar
160g whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
Squeeze of lemon juice
1 beaten egg, for basting

Serve with

Jam and clotted or whipped cream

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 400° and grease and line a baking tray with parchment paper.
• Spoon the self-raising flour into a large bowl with ¼ tsp salt and the baking powder, and mix well.
• Add the cold, cubed butter, and rub in with your fingers until the mix looks like fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar.
• Put the milk into a jug and heat in the microwave for about 30 secs until warm, but not hot. Add the vanilla extract and a squeeze of lemon juice, then set aside briefly. Put your baking tray in the oven to warm.
• Make a well in the dry mix, then add the milk liquid and combine it quickly with a regular knife – it will seem pretty wet at first but will soon solidify into a messy dough. Add additional flour or milk as needed to get the texture you like.
• Scatter some flour onto the work surface, add dough, then sprinkle flour over the dough, your hands and the rolling pin. Fold the dough over a couple of times to make it smoother. Pat into a round about 4cm deep. Take a small cutter (I have used 2″ and 3″ and both work great) and dip it into some flour. Cut out as many scone shapes as you can, flour-ing the cutter and reshaping leftover dough as needed. I usually get 20+ mini scones from this mixture.
• Remove the baking tray from the oven and place the scone shapes on the parchment paper. They don’t really spread so you can place them pretty close to each other.
• Brush the tops with the beaten egg and bake for around 10 minutes, until the scones have risen and are golden brown.
• Serve warm with any delicious New Canaan Farms jam and (if you’re feeling really decadent) whipped or clotted cream

Perfect with any of our jams…