Scottish Oat & Treacle Scones

Scottish Oat & Treacle Scones

Scones originated in Scotland, and are traditionally oat based. The first scones were unleavened, round and flat, usually scored into four or six pieces and baked on a griddle, only to be cut afterwards. 


With this history of the scone in mind, I decided that I should try a "traditional" scone recipe for this blog.







Scottish Oat & Treacle Scones 
Source: Scones by Genevieve Knights

Golden Syrup, aka Treacle

The Ingredients:


150g plain flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
150g rolled oats
75mls double cream
75mls milk
75g treacle (golden syrup)


The Instructions:


Preheat oven to 450ºF. 


In a medium sized bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and salt together. Add the rolled oats and set aside. 


Separately, whisk the cream, milk and treacle together until smooth, heating if necessary to allow the treacle to integrate. 


Add the liquid mixture to the flour. Mix until almost combined.


On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough 2 or 3 times to bring together, careful not to overknead. Split the dough into two pieces and flatten each into a circle about 1 cm thick.


Divide each circle into six triangular pieces. Place on a parchment-paper lined baking tray. 


Bake at 450ºF for about 10 minutes until they have browned and risen slightly.


The Process:

75 g of treacle worked out to be about three tablespoons. It's much stickier than I imagined, and in order to more easily whisk the milk and treacle, I microwaved the cream, milk and treacle for about 15 seconds. After that, I was able to quickly dissolve the treacle in the milk.

Adding the milk, cream and treacle mixture to the dry ingredients.

Doesn't look very appetizing right here, but this is the loosely combined scone dough. It should not be quite together when turned out onto the counter. You want to avoid over-mixing scone dough, or the scone will turn hard.

Dough after 2-3 very gentle kneads. It had the tendency to stick to the counter, so make sure your counter is well floured. It's not particularly sticky for your hands though.

Dough divided with my handy dough cutter. I like to use this tool for making scones and scraping dough off counters. 

This recipe makes 12 rather small scones. Here, the dough is raw.

Baked at 450ºF for 10 minutes. They do not rise a lot, so look for them to be browning on the surface.

My Notes & Tips:

In order to better whisk in the treacle to the milk, I microwaved the milk, cream and treacle together for about 15 seconds. This was just long enough to take the cream mixture from cold to cool, and allowed me to whisk the treacle in without any problems at all.

I used whole wheat pastry flour, and the recipe turned out great. It wasn't too heavy like a lot of recipes can get with whole wheat flour.

The dough is just a little bit sticky, and it tends to come off in clumps of oats, so make sure the countertop and your hands are lightly floured.

A dough cutter is useful, but not necessary for this recipe. I like to use one instead of a knife to cut the dough in half and to cut into triangles. The recipe indicates 6-8 minutes at 220C, but I found 10 minutes at 450ºF was the perfect amount of time to bake.

Results:

I really liked these. They are crunchy from the oats with just a hint of sweetness from the treacle. A delicious combination, eat alongside coffee or tea, plain, with clotted cream or with a little drizzle of treacle over the top. This would be perfect for a light breakfast or afternoon tea! Enjoy!