Royal Scones

Royal Scones & Tea

Where else to start but with a scone recipe entitled: "Royal Scones"? 

My fall back scone recipe is one from America's Test Kitchen: Simple Cream Scones (with my own personal variations). But for something different, I decided to try making these Royal Scones last night. 

I got this recipe off http://www.sconerecipe.org/royal_scone/, a fantastic site for a variety of scone recipes. 

The recipe is given as follows: 

Ingredients

9 oz of flour

3 tbsp of baking powder

2 oz of sugar

½ tbsp of salt

3.5 oz of butter

1 egg

2 yolks

3 tbsp of milk

1 extra yolk or milk to brush the scones

Preparation

In a medium sized bowl, whisk the egg, yolks and milk together. 

Mix the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder. Shred the cold butter in until it looks like wet sand.

Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients without working the dough too much.

Roll out the dough with a rolling pin or your hands to a thickness of 1 inch.

Cut the scones with a round cutter.

Place scones on a parchment-paper lined baking sheet and brush with yolk or milk. Cook for 12 minutes.

The Process:

My ingredients all measured out and ready to go.

Sifted flour, salt, sugar & baking powder.

Eggs and Milk whisked together.

Butter prior to mixing.

Butter shredded to a sandy texture in the flour mixture. Whereas the recipe called for this to be done with a fork, I abandoned the fork method after a few minutes and used my fingers, pinching the butter between index finger and thumb until the desired sandiness was reached.

My dough after being combined with the egg and milk mixture, and kneaded about twice.

Dough all rolled out and ready to be cut with a round pastry cutter.

Going in the oven!

Nicely browned and done after about 18 minutes at 400ºF.

The finished product.

Results: 

I must confess my disappointment with the Royal Scones. When hot, the scones had a distinct, eggy taste, and hardly sweet at all (although not all scones are sweet). Upon cooling, the scones were less eggy, but quite dry. 

Perhaps I should have added a little bit more milk or water to the mix, as the dough was a touch on the dry side. However, I followed the recipe as written, weighing out my ingredients as instructed.

If I were to try these again, I would consider reducing the amount of eggs and replacing with additional milk or water.