Not Posh Scones

So anyways, I told you about my posh scones a few weeks ago – you’ll find that recipe here. These ones, though, are the absolute opposite of the posh scones – they take literally no time and you’ll have fabulous scones on the table in less than twenty minutes. Go to whoa, including the washing up. 

In Escape To Curlew Cottage, Gail learns to make these scones – beginner’s scones. In the novel it’s these scones that get her started on her baking journey. And why not? Just three ingredients, and a very good scone result for very little effort.

The whole three-ingredient scone isn’t a new idea – a similar recipe has been doing the rounds of the Tupperware demonstrations for many years, and more recently even the CWA (Country Women’s Association) has given it the seal of approval. (I mentioned this story about 92-year-old Muriel Halsted a few weeks ago.) 

This recipe, though, is the one I make when I’m short of time. It comes from one I saw at the Bundaberg Brewed Drinks factory in, wait for it, Bundaberg. Feel free to substitute the lemon, lime and bitters for lemonade.

What you need:

• 3 cups self-raising flour
• 1 cup Bundaberg lemon, lime and bitters
• 1 cup fresh cream

Oh, and a pinch of salt…but that hardly qualifies as an ingredient…and a little milk to brush over the top.

What you do with it…

• Preheat the oven to 220C (and ignore your husband when he tries to tell you that it’s way too hot for scones). Grease or flour the base of the scone tray while you’re at it.
• Put the flour and salt into a bowl and combine.
• Make a well in the centre and pour in the cream and lemon, lime and bitters and mix together – you don’t want to overwork them so I find a knife works best for this.
• Turn it out onto a floured bench and – I use my hands rather than a rolling pin for this – press it out into a 4-5cm slab. No, you don’t need a ruler.
• Using a round cookie cutter – or a small glass if you don’t have a round cookie cutter – cut discs in the dough. As an aside, remember when vegemite and cheese spread came in jars that you could use afterwards as glasses? They were the perfect size for cutting scones…just saying.
• Bring what’s left of the dough back together and pat it out again so you can cut more scones. Repeat until all the dough is used.
• Place the scones closely together on your prepared tray and brush the top with a little milk….does that qualify as another ingredient?
• Pop in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes. The tops should be golden.

These are best served with really good butter – we buy a French-style one from the Gympie Cheese Man at Kawana Farmer’s Markets – and marmalade or apricot jam. They’re also great with ginger jam – we get that from the Buderim Ginger Factory at Yandina. 

Apparently they do ginger scones up there (which I haven’t tried) but I’m thinking how good it would be to substitute the lemon lime and bitters for ginger beer and maybe some tiny pieces of crystallised ginger? Yes? No? 

It would be irresponsible of me not to give that a go – purely from a research viewpoint, of course.