Back to tradition with a batch of cheese scones

After last week's exotic excursion to South America, this week I felt like baking something simple (jet lag) and traditionally English. And what's more English than scones? My youngest sister Hatty makes the best scones in Yorkshire - maybe the best scones in England but it's hard to tell because they never last long enough to make it out of Yorkshire. If you want one/three, you can get them in her cafe, the Jam Jar in Ripon. I think cheese scones make a regular appearance on Thursdays, which is market day.

People often ask Hatty for her scone recipe, expecting it to be some long held family secret. In fact, it's from the free recipe book that comes with Be-Ro flour, although no one ever believes it. And as you'll see from my attempt, there's clearly some other magic involved...

Mum's had a well-thumbed copy of this book for as long as I can remember (i.e. the 70s!); my copy is a bit newer but the recipes are exactly the same.

Ingredients

(makes about 8)

175g self-raising flour

1/2 tsp mustard powder

Pinch of salt and pepper

25g butter or margarine

75g grated cheese

1 egg

2 tbsp milk

Method

- Mix the flour and seasonings together, then rub in the cold fat

- Stir in the cheese, keeping a bit to sprinkle over the top

- Mix together the egg and milk, then add to the dry mix to make a soft dough

- Roll out and cut out, either triangles or using a fluted cutter (but see the Tips section later on this). Brush with a little milk or egg and sprinkle with the leftover cheese

- Bake at 220C for 10 to 15 minutes until golden brown.

Now embarrassingly, you'll notice that despite the camera angle, these scones are biscuit flat! 

The Bearded Argentinian assures me that they taste delicious, but if I want to practice with a few more batches, he'll do his best to test them all. There I was thinking that scone-making was in my genes, and out come these failures... So I did a bit of research:

Tips for not making flat scones:

- Firstly, I had no idea there was such variety in recipes: raising agents, flour types, eggs vs no eggs, lard vs butter vs margarine...

- Most likely, the butter had something to do with it, as I only had spreadable butter to hand, and cold hard block butter is probably better

- Consulting the scone oracle Hatty, you don't need to roll them out either, just pat the dough down and leave them much thicker (can't believe this is against what the BeRo book says!). Then they might turn out more like these beauties:

(https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g209973-d3906140-Reviews-The_Jam_Jar-Ripon_North_Yorkshire_England.html?m=19904)