So it been a while seen I made some scones and I love to eat them when they are still slightly warm from the oven, so much better than store bought. This fresh berry scone recipe is from The Great British Bake Off: 100 Foolproof Recipes, the only thing that I changed was instead of blueberries I used strawberries.
Makes 8-9
250g Self Raising Flour
60g Caster Sugar
50g Unsalted Butter, chilled and diced
1 Medium Egg, at room temperature
100ml Buttermilk, at room temperature
50g Raspberries
40g Strawberries
a little Buttermilk or Milk, for brushing
Demerara Sugar, for sprinkling
1. Preheat your oven to Gas Mark 7, line a baking try with greaseproof paper.
2. Sift the flour and caster sugar into a mixing bowl. Add in the pieces of chill butter and rub them into the flour using your fingertips. The mixture show look like fine crumbs and no lumps of butter should remain.
3. In a small bowl put the egg and 100ml buttermilk and beat with a fork, just to mix. Pour this into the crumbs and mix with a round-bladed knife to make a rough looking dough. Add the berries and using your hands to bring the mixture together to make a ball of slightly soft dough, with the berries evenly distributed – try not to squash the berries to much as you mix. If there are any dry crumbs at the bottom of bowl work in a little more buttermilk.
4. Lightly dust your worktop and hands with flour. Turn out the scone dough onto the worktop and gently pat it out to about 3cm thick. Dust a plain round 6cm cutter in flour and then stamp out your scones, re-flour when it starts to get sticky. Press together the scone off cuts, pat out again and cut out the remaining scones.
5. Place the scones on the baking, spacing them slightly apart – to allow for spreading. Lightly brush the tops of each scone with buttermilk or milk the sprinkle over the Demerara sugar.
6. Bake in the preheated oven for 12-14 minutes until they are a nice golden brown, on the underside too – these fresh berry scones will take slightly longer to bake than regular or dried fruit scones.
7. Once the scones are out of the oven transfer them immediately to a wire rack and leave to cool slightly, then eat warm. These are best eaten on the same day.
Spread your scones with butter, jam and/or clotted cream – I served mine with fresh raspberries and strawberries
This was the first time that I have used buttermilk to make scones, it is certainly something that I will be doing again as they were softer than any that I have made or even had before.
The scones were soft and moist and the added fruit baked in them very well after having trouble with the dough itself and the sprinkling of Demerara sugar on top of the scones gave it a nice crunchy top.
The next time that I make these I will not be putting the strawberries in as I think the extra juice from them made the scone dough quite sloppy and hard to work with, so will be doing the blueberries next time.
Perfecting Bakes 
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