Cheese Scones

Cheese scones were always regarded as a bit of a luxury when I was a child. The reasoning behind this was the cheese, you see, which cost money. And despite this, the cheese scones were never very cheesy. Presumably it was the cost. Recipes for cheese scones abound with the cheese weighing in at about one ninth of the weight of the recipe. The rest is self-raising flour, which is cheap, cheap, cheap.

But, to my mind, if you're going to make cheese scones then the damn things should taste of cheese. And I don't mean just the top half a centimetre where someone's sprinkled some grated cheese prior to slamming them in the oven. There are a couple of practical ways of doing this. Firstly, you could add more cheese. Or, secondly, you could chop the cheese coarsely and add it to the mixture rather than grating it. Then you get chunks of intense cheese flavour rather than a diluted cheesy vagueness. Apparently.

Ingredients

225g of self raising flour. We have this here in the UK. It's plain flour with a bit of baking powder in it. Consult a chef or the side of a tub of baking powder if you want to make your own; they'll give you proper instructions.

55g of butter. Add a bit more if you're feeling generous.

25g of cheese. But no - let's ignore that. Double it. And add some more. But don't go wild. Let's say 75g of good tasty cheese, keeping a bit to scatter on top.

150ml milk. Cow's, usually, but feel free to experiment with soya, rice, almond, goat or whatever comes to hand.

Method

Quite literally easier than pie. Rub the butter into the flour, add a pinch of salt to season and then add the cheese. Make a dough with the milk and it's all ready to roll out to about 2cm thick (about 3/4 of an inch) and cut into little circles with an appropriately sized cutter. Aim for about twelve.

Pop them in the oven at 220°C (or 425°F) and wait for about 15 minutes until they're golden brown, maybe a little less. I made some and they were very brown by the time quarter of an hour had gone past. Oh, and they'll rise during cooking, as well.

A word about 'scones'

Now you've finished, was that what you were expecting? We call them scones over here in the UK, and they seem to originate from Scotland. Most of us pronounce it 'sc-on' and some of us pronounce it 'sc-oh!-n'. It's a bit like bread buns, tea cakes, barm cakes, rollsand baps; all the same thing, just pronounced differently.

Perhaps you call them biscuits, in which case what do you call proper biscuits? Probably cookies. Over here, we call cookies biscuits and biscuits scones, then. Exciting, isn't it?

Regardless of nomenclature: make... and enjoy.