CCC CONTEST Looking Back/Look Forward 4.09

Recently, I was brought back to more than 10 years ago when I visited a friend in Australia, an ex-colleague from my previous company who invited me to his home. His daughter at that time, introduced me to the most delicious home baked scones and I was in love with scones ever since then. It was their family recipe and she took over from her mother to make them everyday.

The ingredients were so simple, flour, butter, egg, some sugar, a bit of salt and baking powder. The way she made it was also simple and it was like a tea staple for them. The wife and daughter could whip up scones within half hour everyday and have them with tea.

When I returned home, I would look for buttery scones. But I have to say that it wasn’t easy to find good scones, just like it wasn’t easy to find good croissant. To me, a good scone or croissant has to be flaky, soft and buttery. Some of the ones I bought and tried were hard and not buttery. They were probably stingy with butter or used cheap butter.

I also tried making scones myself. My earlier attempts didn’t work at all. They turned out hard as rock. I kneaded too much as I later found out. There are many variations of recipes available online but I managed to try one about two years ago that I was quite proud of because it worked and it tasted buttery, the way I like them. Each time I felt like scones, I would use that recipe, a recipe for fluffy English scones though I do not know what is the difference with other scones.