This is the recipe for the vanilla Earl Grey scones I made for my Cream Tea without Crossing the Pond, travel from home post. The recipe is quick and easy. I’ve adapted the basic plain scone recipe from Canadian cooking icon, Jean Paré’s, Muffins and More cookbook.
Ingredients
All purpose flour 2 cups
Granulated sugar ½ cup (alternatively use slightly less Splenda if you can’t have sugar)
Baking powder 3 tsp.
Salt ½ tsp.
Cold butter ½ cup
Egg 1
Milk 2/3 cup minus 2 tbsp. (explained below)
Earl Grey tea bags 4
Boiling water 2 tbsp.
Vanilla 1 tbsp
Milk for brushing tops
Sugar for sprinkling (optional)
Mixing the Ingredients
First, prepare an earl grey concentrate by cutting open two bags of tea, and combining the contents with the boiling water. I suggest doing this directly into a measuring cup so that you can later add the milk to create 2/3 of a cup of liquid for the recipe. (When adapting recipes as I have done you want to maintain the proportions of liquid to dry ingredients, thus why the original recipe calls for 2/3 cup of milk and my version will be 2/3 cup less 2 tbsp). Let the mixture sit and cool while preparing the other ingredients.
Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Cut open two tea bags and add the contents to the dry ingredient mixture. Cut butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture is crumbly (butter won’t be integrated completely and should be cold to reduce the risk of having a greasy scone).
In a small bowl beat the egg, then add vanilla. To your earl grey concentrate add milk until you have 2/3 cup of liquid in the measuring cup. Then add mixture to the egg and vanilla.
Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir with a fork until you have a soft dough, but don’t overwork it.
Shaping the Dough
I divided the dough into eight balls and then patted them flat onto a greased pan with my fingers, and brushed the tops with a bit of milk. You may not want to do it this way as I was highly criticized for the shape of my scones (I will call the shape rustic, but it’s true they were not round and not great for cutting to spread cream and jam on them. Lesson learned).
The original recipe calls for the dough to be patted into two 6 inch (15 cm) rounds and placed on a greased baking sheet. Then brush the tops with milk and sprinkle with sugar (I skipped the sugar since the idea was to add jam and cream later and the extra sugar didn’t seem necessary). Score each of the rounds into 6 pie shaped wedges. Note: This shape was a bit controversial here, though my mother has always made scones in this shape (cut into wedges). However, it’s highly unlikely that you would find them this way at afternoon tea in a restaurant. It really doesn’t matter at home, but you may want to make individual scones to replicate the restaurant experience. See my note above on my own failure to get the shape right and avoid patting them flat!
Baking the scones
Once you have decided on the appropriate shape, you should bake at 425˚ F (220˚ C) until golden brown. If using the original recipe shape (two rounds) bake for 15 minutes. If making individual scones, cut back on the time. I needed 12 minutes for my scones to bake.
