It’s not exactly SCONE to plan!

Depending on your nationality, dialect and whether you eat tomAYtoes or tomARtoes will have a bearing on your pronunciation of this week’s Monday Munchies title.

I asked the maid in dulcet tone
To order me a buttered scone;
The silly girl has been and gone
And ordered me a buttered scone.

Source, Wikipedia (Anon.)

Personally, having the flattened Yorkshire tones peculiar to the East Riding of the county, it makes no sense to me. You see, I’m a ‘scone as in bone‘, not a ‘scone as in gone‘ kinda girl. Actually, I’m more ‘scern as in fern‘ (Mum’s been on fern, she’s made a batch o’ scerns…) but enough about my accent…I’ll leave you to decipher the translation!

However, as today marks Burns’ Night in Scotland, I thought I’d honour their pronunciation for the purpose of making my title work! Oh, and because I discovered something I wasn’t aware of: Scones originate from Scotland!

Yes, scoanes, scons, whatever you call these delightful treats that are the cornerstone of cream teas, have been baked in Scotland for hundreds of years, with the first mention of the word dating back to 1513.

So Scotland, we thank you for introducing these tasty treasures to the world!

Following on from last week’s musing on Afternoon Tea, I had a craving for scones. And here’s where I discovered something else I didn’t know – how to make them! My plan had been foiled already 😔 Surely, I’ve whipped up a batch at some point in life haven’t I?

Well, yes. A bit of trawling through photos (because even before the blog, and without the excuse of Instagram, I was annoying enough to snap practically every morsel of food I ate or prepared!), showed I had made some gluten free ones a couple of years ago. Unlike cupcake recipes that I can do from memory though, scones were not going to be as obliging, so a-Googling I went.

I settled on this recipe from Jamie Oliver. His attitude to measurements has always been to my liking – a slack handful of this, whack in a bit of that, oh and let’s save on washing up, I’ll just serve it up on my chopping board…

In fact, at one point in the recipe he calls for you to pull it all together in a scruffy mess. (Was he talking about me or the mixture?) I’m good at mess, I can do this!

I opted to mix in a three-way, equal split of raisins, cranberries and dark chocolate chunks and aside from this and adding a little more milk to help the dough be more pliable, for once I didn’t change the instructions!

The result: They look good and taste…decent. Although much better with the addition of some jam and cream, they weren’t the scones I’d planned on.

For me they were a little too dry and next time I make them (because I will, they were super easy) I’d like to add more butter. Sorry arteries…

The dough will make around 18-20 scones and the best part is, you can freeze it, to pop in the oven when you want a quick, sweet treat!

Do you have any favourite scone recipes I should try? If you have, please share – Perhaps I’ll opt for a savoury version next time.

Until then, grab yourself a whiskey and enjoy your haggis – Happy Burns’ Night everyone!

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Image Credits: My own and cafemavens.com, flikr.com and shropshirestar.com.

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