Maple syrup scones

These are from the rather gorgeous Rose Bakery cookbook Breakfast Lunch Tea, which our friend Jude gave us as a present (not using the royal we there – we as in me and Fran, the wife, as it was our wedding anniversary).

Founded by Rose Carrarini, who co-founded Villandry in London, the bakery/cafe looks like a great place; I’d love to visit one of these days. It’s basically doing something that Fran’s talked about for years – selling English teashop type goodies (and beyond) to the French, who apparently love that kind of thing.

The main emphasis seems to be on wholesome, simple snacks and “little meals” – granola to soup, by way of tartlets, mini-pizzas, cookies and scones. In fact, the sort of thing I’d love to sell in a cafe-bakery if I ever owned one!

This is the second recipe I tried. And rather delicious it is too.

Scones. I love scones, but mostly I just make plain ones. These, however, include that irresistible ingredient – maple syrup.

They are v tasty, with the maple a fairly subtle factor. Mostly, they’re defined by being very short and crumbly. Too short and crumbly arguably, as they fall to bits a bit too easily while cooking. But definitely a recipe to return to.

Here’s the recipe, to make 12 scones, using a 50mm round cutter.

Preheat the oven to 200C (or 180 if you have a hot fan oven).

260g plain flour
80g wholemeal flour
35g rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder (“very heaped” Carrarini writes)
1 teaspoon caster sugar (ditto)
1/2 teaspoon salt
160g unsalted butter, diced up
4 tablespoons maple syrup
4 tablespoons milk

Sift together the flours, add the salt and oats, and mix.
Crumb in the butter.
Mix the maple syrup and milk in a separate bowl or jug, then pour that into the dry ingredients and mix with fork (I like to use those old, bone-handled palette knives)
Bring together to a moist but not sticky dough, adding a little more milk or flour accordingly.
Do not over-knead the dough.
Roll out to about 30mm thick, stamp out scones, place on greased baking sheet, brush with beaten egg.
Bake for 20 minutes.

“Serve warm” apparently. I had mine with plenty of butter and homemade apple and blackberry jam and they were yum.

Feel a strong bond with this cookbook already. (It helps that it’s a nice object too; only quibble is the presence of a few too many pics of cute kids when they could be showing us more pics of, you know, the results of the actual recipes.)