Baking Together: Scones

Posted on by Malin - Sensational Learning with Penguin

This summer, Penguin has discovered a liking for scones, so we’ve added these to our little repertoire of recipes for baking together. They’re really quick and easy to make!

We like to make them with raisins, as ‘fruit scones’, but they can just as well be made without, if you prefer.

Here’s our list of ingredients, making approx 20 scones:

  • 350 g flour, plus some for the work surface
  • 75 g sugar
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 100-125 g butter or margarine (we use Stork)
  • 150 ml milk
  • 1 egg (beaten)
  • 2-3 handfuls of raisins (or as many or as few as you like)

1D229033-65C0-49B5-A073-AFFF837601AE

After making sure our surfaces and hands are all clean (just like in ‘Big Cook, Little Cook’), we start by putting all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder and salt) in a big bowl. Oh, and turn the oven on, to about 180 degrees Celsius if you have a fan assisted one, otherwise approx 200 degrees/gas mark 6.

Then add butter/marge and work it into the dry stuff with your fingers, until it resembles a very fine crumble:

1EC926C7-C420-4D53-9793-67CBF8565800

After this, it’s time to mix in the milk, followed by the beaten egg. Penguin is a bit funny about eggs: He’s happy to start cracking the shell, but as soon as a crack is made he’ll hand it over to me, as he finds the gooey contents quite disgusting. (Funny fact: Apparently Alfred Hitchcock was similarly freaked out by eggs, did you know that?)

Once the milk and egg have been stirred in, chuck in the raisins, and give it all a final stir (this is one of Penguin’s favourite bits, as it gives him a chance to nab a few raisins, yum!).

CDA7BFB6-D5A6-4FAF-BC41-063D064A4587

At this stage, you might think the mixture is a bit too sticky, but that’s how it’s supposed to be. So sprinkle your work surface generously with flour, and sprinkle some over your hands and over the mixture as well. Then scoop it all out onto your surface, and fold it a few times, adding more flour if necessary, until you have a loose but dough-like and workable mixture.

Flatten the ‘dough’ out to a thickness of approximately 1/3 inch or so, then cut the scones out and put them on a baking tray (we use baking paper, but I guess a silicone mat or other method of preventing your goods from sticking should work just as well). We’ve been using a tumbler for cutting the scones out, and that has worked really well, but if we’d had a circular cookie cutter of a suitable size, that might have been even better.

When you’ve got as many circles out as you can, gather the leftover mix together and pat it back out, and take some more circles out. Repeat until all of the mixture has been used.

FAC3731C-08CF-49A0-8AF2-080E383F5982Penguin really likes this part, and has been very helpful with cutting the scones out and placing them on the baking tray. He tends to get a bit carried away though, so I need to be there to slow him down and guide him a little (and yes, flour ends up all over the place when we bake as you can see, but it’s all worth it).

When the baking tray is full, Penguin will pick it up, I’ll open the oven door, and he’ll then hand the tray for me to put in the oven. In ‘Big Cook, Little Cook’ they always say about using the oven that “This is a job for your grown-up helper, ‘cause the oven is hot, hot, hot”, and that seems to have stuck. Perhaps in a year or two he can move on to putting the tray in himself, but for now I’m very happy to help, and delighted about this bit of safety awareness (not generally a strong area for our boy).

So, the scones go into the oven, and after about 10 minutes they’re done! The time needed may vary a bit depending on oven, so keep an eye. We do our’s quite high up in the oven, and I think that should work well in most cases.

02C0A331-DA5C-4726-B992-15873A1BD50C

Now you’ve got some tasty scones to tuck into, but how do you like yours? I love the traditional combo of clotted cream and jam, the husband prefers them thinly spread with butter and then a dollop of jam, while Penguin likes them just as they are, with no stickyness added. What do you prefer?

To finish off, here’s a photo from the very day that Penguin discovered his like for scones, at Standen House and Garden a few weeks ago (my gunk-covered scone in the foreground, with Penguin and his nice and dry scone behind it):

9C7B68B3-B409-4A1D-AFDE-318241B28F94

As you might have gathered if you’ve read some of our other posts, we very much like to get out and about to explore various places. But we don’t have much of a budget for eating out, so making our own scones to bring along is definitely a good way to save a few bob. Baking together is also great for practising things like counting and measuring, action words (stir, pour, mix, get, etc), descriptive words (dry, wet, sticky, soft, tough, tasty, messy, etc) coordination and motor skills, working together, and more.

Making Yummy Scones! Baking Together is good fun as well as a great Multisensory Hands-On Learning Activity for Life Skills, Early Numeracy, Motor Skills and more! - Sensational Learning with Penguin

I hope you’ll enjoy making these scones if you decide to give it a go (don’t forget to pin this!), and if you have any comments or questions, please let us know below!

If you like baking, you might also want to take a look at our previous posts about things we’ve been baking together:

*THANK YOU FOR READING! PLEASE JOIN US ON INSTAGRAM, FACEBOOK AND TWITTER, TOO!*

Keep Calm and Carry On Linking Sunday
Musings Of A Tired Mummy

40 thoughts on “Baking Together: Scones”

  1. I have to admit scones are one of my favourite things and are really so easy to make or great for a treat when you are out and about. Living in Devon we often have the jam or cream first debate – to be honest who cares (but pleased to see you got it right!). We love savoury scones as well. #KCACOLS

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Thank you Clare! Haha yes, I don’t really mind about the order of cream and jam as it tastes just as good either way, but I do think jam on top is more pleasing to the eye 😊 I haven’t had savory scones since I was a kid! Probably about time I have some of those again soon, thank you for reminding me x

      Like

      Reply

  4. Scones always remind me of my late Mum as hers were famous as she did them for coffee mornings, funeral teas and more for the church and various charities. She did plain ones, fruit ones and cheese ones. I always preferred the plain ones. And of course you can make them into a luscious afternoon tea with cream and jam which reminds me of happy holidays in the South West. Baking together is such a lovely and timeless activity and I still have my mum’s mixing bowl and now my children use it too for their own creations now they are teens. I will try your recipe and thanks so much for this post as on a tense day it brought me such joyful memories #MMBC

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Thank you so much Kate for your lovely comment! Your mum sounds like a great lady, and it’s really nice that you still have her mixing bowl and it’s now being used by the next generation. I’m so glad to hear that our little blog post brought back lovely memories, and I hope that tomorrow will be an altogether more positive day in every way xx

      Like

      Reply

  5. We love making (and eating) scones too. I love your account of baking with Penguin. He sounds like a chef in the making. We’ve had to up the size of our scone cutter after encountering the biggest scones on holiday once. Good side is that nobody ever wants more than one. Jam and cream for us too. #MMBC

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  10. I’m rubbish at baking and haven’t done any in years, but this post has got me convinced I need to try this – and my four year old daughter would love to help, I’m sure. Since scones don’t really exist in Mexico – there’s something similar but not the same – she’s never even tried them. I guess I have to do something about that! Thanks for linking up with #kcacols – I hope you join us again!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. You need to get baking then 😉 Get your kids to help, make sure you’ve got some clotted cream and jam, and you can do a proper cream tea. Maybe your children want to bring some dolls to the table too, or you could do a teddybears picnic on a blanket (outside or on the living room floor, depending on weather)! 😊 x

      Like

      Reply

    1. I think she might be right, though I wouldn’t dare to try it with milk that’s just turned sour in the fridge. Some recipes use buttermilk, which in it’s traditional form is supposedly quite tart? I grew up in Sweden and we used to use a kind of fermented milk for making scones. A bit like ‘kefir milk’, if you’ve tried that? 🙂 Thank you for reading and commenting!

      Like

      Reply
  20. Pingback: Baking Together: Cinnamon Rolls! – Sensational Learning with Penguin
  21. Pingback: Days Out in the South East: Standen House & Garden – Sensational Learning with Penguin

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s