Here’s how to make fruit scones in the best possible way by Andrew Gravett, The Executive Pastry at The Langham London. The Langham London was the first hotel to serve afternoon tea, so they know a thing or two about perfecting the art of the scone!
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Hello, my name is Andrew Gravett. I'm the pastry chef at the Langham Hotel and we're going to make our fruit scones.
00:05 The first thing to do is to mix the flour with butter.
00:18 Make sure that the butter is very, very cold, so straight from the fridge and even sometimes it can be directly from the freezer.
00:27 The baking powder, sugar and salt. So we mix everything in the bowl together.
00:32 I'm going to put it onto the machine. So we're going to leave this to mix for about 10 to 15 minutes until we get a very fine sandy texture.
00:41 So as you can see we've got a very fine sandy texture. So the butter and the flour are well mixed together.
00:52 We're just going to add on a slow speed the egg and the milk to the texture that we want.
00:57 So you might find that at times you don't add all the egg in. It really depends on how much moisture that type of flour will absorb.
01:09 It's just plain flour but different flours will absorb different quantities of liquid.
01:18 We're just going to remove it from the machine and we're going to finish to work it.
01:22 So now we're just going to sprinkle a little bit of flour onto the top. Not too much.
01:27 The dough onto there. Making sure we get everything out.
01:33 We're just going to work this dough. You can see at the moment there's not really any texture to it. It's a soft dough, no resistance.
01:43 The more that we work it we're going to start making the dough slightly elastic. The more elastic it is it means we're working the gluten.
01:50 As the baking powder pushes up the scone the gluten will hold the scone in the shape we want it.
01:55 If we don't work the scone enough the texture and the flavour of the actual scone eating it should be nice.
02:00 But we won't have such a straight sided scone. It will be slightly flat on the bottom.
02:05 By doing this working will enable us to have presentation wise something that's straighter.
02:11 It's much like kneading a dough for bread. By the end of this kneading the dough should become smoother.
02:18 And it's very tempting to add flour all the time to stop it from sticking.
02:24 Ideally you want to add the least amount possible. So it's only when it's really sticking to the table that you need to add more flour.
02:32 So now we're just going to add the fruit into the dough.
02:37 If we were just making a plain scone obviously we wouldn't be doing this stage. We'll just work them in.
02:42 Just try and make sure that there's fruit in all of the scone.
02:51 We're just going to roll the dough out. A little bit more flour.
02:58 A little bit on the top.
03:04 And we're going to roll it out to around just under 2cm.
03:11 Just smooth it over. Make sure it's not sticking to the table.
03:16 And then that's ready to cut.
03:24 So we're just using a small stainless cutter. It's very thin and quite sharp so that it will give us hopefully a good clean cut.
03:33 We're going to flour the ring each time.
03:35 And we press down, not closing the cutter but just pressing down leaving it open.
03:40 Otherwise it creates a vacuum and squashes the scone down.
03:44 And just a quick burst of flouring each time just to stop the scone from sticking.
03:56 We're trying to touch the scone the least amount possible so that we keep its round shape and not to mark the top.
04:06 So now the scones are cut. We've just got a mix of egg yolk, a little bit of sugar and some salt in this egg wash.
04:15 And we're just going to brush each scone with a layer of wash and this will give us a nice golden colour on top when they're baked.
04:24 Just a little tip, you can make these scones the day before, keep them in the fridge, take them out of the fridge, leave them for about 10-15 minutes to come to temperature and then bake them.
04:35 So the scones are baked and just out of the oven. So we're just going to finish off the scones as I would like to eat them.
04:48 So we're just going to slice the scones.
04:51 We're going to put a good scoop of jam onto each scone.
05:05 Then a nice spoon of clotted cream.
05:17 A little icing sugar on the lids of the scone.
05:43 And there are our fruit scones with apricot jam and clotted cream.
05:47 [Music]