Santa brought me Paul Hollywood’s book “How to bake”. The chap might not be my favourite man on the tv, but he certainly knows his baking and the book is packed with useful information. The first recipe I tried from it were scones. Kitchen aid sat this one out, as I actually did as I was told and used my fingers to mix the flour and butter and then the rest of the ingredients and made sure I’m not overworking the dough. I ended up with a plate of scones much lighter than the shop bought ones, a few too many though, maybe 500 g of flour will not be needed next time, unless there will be more than 2 people eager to eat them.

450g of strong white bread flour was used, rubbed with 80 g of unsalted, soft butter ( I might use salted next time), 80 g of caster sugar, 2 beaten eggs, 5 tsps of baking powder and a bit less than 250 ml of milk. The remaining 50 g of flour was to be used for dusting and adjusting the runny batter as required, but I ended up putting most of it back into the bag and not using all of the milk. As above, it is important not to overwork the dough, which I was careful not to do, when ready, I cut out the scones with round cookie cutter, placed on the baking parchment, gently washed the tops with beaten egg and baked for about 12 minutes in 220 degrees.

Served warm with French butter and blackcurrant conserve.