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Here’s how to make fruit scones in the best possible way by Andrew Gravett, The Executive Pastry at The Langham London. The Langham London was the first hotel to serve afternoon tea, so they know a thing or two about perfecting the art of the scone!
Transcript
00:00Hello, my name is Andrew Gravett. I'm the pastry chef at the Langham Hotel and we're going to make our fruit stones.
00:13The first thing to do is to mix the flour with butter.
00:20We make sure that the butter is very, very cold, so straight from the fridge and even sometimes it can be directly from the freezer.
00:27The baking powder, sugar and salt. So we mix everything in the bowl together.
00:33I'm going to put it onto the machine. So we're going to leave this to mix for about 10 to 15 minutes until we get a very fine sandy texture.
00:44So as you can see, we've got a very fine sandy texture, so the butter and the flour are well mixed together.
00:51We're just going to add, on a slow speed, the egg and the milk to the texture that we want.
00:59So you might find that at times you don't add all the egg in. It really depends on how much moisture that type of flour will absorb.
01:09It's just the plain flour, but different flours will absorb different quantities of liquid.
01:14Then we're just going to remove it from the machine and we're going to finish to work it.
01:22So now we're going to just sprinkle a little bit of flour onto the top, not too much.
01:27The dough onto there, making sure we get everything out.
01:32And we're just going to work this dough. You can see at the moment there's not really any texture to it.
01:40It's a soft dough, no resistance.
01:43And the more that we work it, we're going to start making the dough slightly elastic.
01:48The more elastic it is, it means we're working the gluten.
01:51As the baking powder pushes up the scone, the gluten will hold the scone in the shape we want it.
01:55If we don't work the scone enough, the texture and the flavour of the actual scone eating it should be nice.
02:00But we won't have such a straight sided scone. It will be slightly fat on the bottom.
02:06By doing this working will enable us to have, presentation wise, something that's straighter.
02:10So it's very much like kneading a dough for bread.
02:14By the end of this kneading, the dough should become smoother.
02:19And it's very tempting to add flour all the time to stop it from sticking.
02:23Ideally, you want to add the least amount of possible.
02:26So it's only when it's really sticking to the table that you need to add flour.
02:34So now we're just going to add the fruit into the dough.
02:37If we were just making a plain scone, obviously we wouldn't be doing this stage.
02:40I'm just working them in.
02:48To try and make sure that there's fruit in all of the scone.
02:51We're just going to roll the dough out.
02:57A little bit more flour.
02:59A little bit on the top.
03:04Then we're going to roll it out.
03:09To around, just under two centimetres.
03:12Just smooth it over.
03:14Make sure it's not sticking to the table.
03:16And then that's ready to cut.
03:24So we're just using a small stainless cutter.
03:27It's very thin and quite sharp.
03:30So that it will give us, hopefully, a good clean cut.
03:33We flour the ring each time.
03:34And we press down, not closing the cutter, but just pressing down, leaving it open.
03:40Otherwise, it creates a vacuum and it squashes the scone down.
03:44And just a quick burst.
03:50So flouring each time, just to stop the scone from sticking.
03:55We're trying to touch the scone the least amount of possible.
03:59So that we keep its round shape.
04:03Not to mark the top.
04:06So now the scones are cut.
04:09We've just got a mix of egg yolk, a little bit of sugar and some salt in this wash.
04:14Egg wash.
04:16And we're just going to brush each scone with a layer of wash.
04:19And this will give us a nice golden colour on top when they're baked.
04:23Just a little tip.
04:25You can make these scones the day before.
04:27Keep them in the fridge.
04:29Take them out of the fridge.
04:31Leave them for about 10-15 minutes to come to temperature.
04:34And then bake them.
04:35So the scones are baked and just out of the oven.
04:44So we're just going to finish off the scones as I would like to eat them.
04:49So we're just going to slice the scones.
04:50We're going to put a good scoop of jam onto each scone.
05:14And then a nice spoon of glotted cream.
05:20A little icing sugar on the lids of the scone.
05:43And there are our fruit scones with apricot jam and clotted cream.
05:50We'll see you next time.
05:51See you next time.
05:52Bye.