OOOH!cake: ice cream scones

Okay, so the title might be a little misleading since no, I didn't bake scones with icecream and no, there's nothing about icecream here. heh, But I thought it sounded...CUTE! Which, in my opinion, is a good enough reason to put it as my entry's title. =) whoopdeedoo!

I did, however, bake SCONES! I've never really had an urge to do so I just needed to use up the double cream that Vee and I bought for chocolate fondue and since I resolved to try my best to not waste ingredients, I decided I'd bake scones using whatever double cream I had left and make up the rest with full cream milk. Not too shabby I say!

My initial intention was to use the double cream during the EATING part of the scone, but then I realized that I could easily incorporate it into the PRODUCTION part of it. Besides, I got really excited knowing that I was trying something that I don't normally do. and MY MOM LOVES SCONES. So I guess that was good enough reason to bake me some scones=)

Took a recipe from Cuisine July 2005 (which is probably the most used recipe magazine I own, I baked their Irish Soda Bread the other day..MMMMMMM) and adapted it. Might be (and probably is) a mistake on my part because the scones didn't bake up quite as high as I hoped they would. My fault because I did roll them kinda thinly and I have no idea if using heart-shaped cutter might have affected it but yeap. Those which I did cut quite thickly did rise and looked more scone-like. and they were in the shape of HEARTS. HOW CUTE! =) The heart-shaped thing was purely out of laziness- I was too lazy to go buy a round cookie cutter. heh.

I did have a little trouble with the recipe, not because it was complicated but because I couldn't mix the flour mixture and milk/cream mixture to form a dough, seemed a tad too dry, so I just kept adding tablespoonfuls of milk until it stuck together. ALL GOOD! and the dough didn't stick to the table surface I was rolling it out on, which is why I KNOW I'm definitely baking scones again. They're clean to bake.=)

ANYWAY! here's the recipe:

Scones (by Julie Le Clerc)
3 cups self-raising flour
1 tablespoon caster sugar
large pinch salt
35g butter, cubed
1 1/4 cups milk (I used half double/thickened cream and half full-cream milk)
1/2 cup raisins (optional)
extra flour for dusting
butter or jam and clotted or lightly whipped cream to serve

1)Preheat oven to 220degrees celcius
2)Sift the flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl
3)Rub in the butter to form fine breadcrumbs
4)Make a well in the centre and pour milk/cream in, using a dinner knife, mix quickly and lightly to just combine.
5)Turn mixture to lightly floured surface and knead to combine
6)Dust again with flour, and roll out to about 3 cm thick and cut into rounds with a 6cm pastry cutter (i used a heart-shaped cookie cutter, worked okay for me)
7)Gather any pastry scraps to make more scones.
8)Bake for 10-15 minutes or until puffed and golden
9)Cut in half and fill with butter, jam and/or cream. Makes 12

*The use of double cream makes for a richer scone. You could try using thin cream or whipping cream. For flavour variations you could omit the raisins and use chocolate chips or poppy seed and orange zest. I think this is a really good basic scone recipe and so forgiving, so feel free to add whatever you wanna!=) Maybe feta cheese and sundried tomatoes.