For those who don't know it, clotted cream tastes like something of a hybrid between butter and whipped cream. It's rich, creamy, spreadable, but not sweet (hence the jam). In some places you can get store-bought packaged versions of it, but those are usually much less creamy and quite disappointing. I've tried making it at home before, but without success. So when a colleague recently posted about her luck making clotted cream at home using a method I hadn't tried before, I knew I had to try it, and it came out perfect!
Since I had clotted cream, I also had to make scones. I used this recipe as my guideline. The ones you see in the picture are gluten free, made with a good quality all purpose GF flour. If you have one you can trust, give it a try.
Note: the clotted cream takes at least 20 hours to make, so make sure you plan ahead with it!
Scones with Home-Made Clotted Cream
Ingredient:
-1.5 cup of heavy cream (try to find one that is not ultra-pasteurized, if you can)
Preparation:
1. Preheat your oven to a high temperature, about 190 C/374 F. When the oven is fully heated TURN IT OFF. We will be using the residual heat from the oven to make the cream.
2. Pour the heavy cream into a flat oven-safe dish. You want to have as much surface area as possible. Place the cream into the (turned-off!) oven, and leave it there for 12 hours (overnight is easiest). The cream should develop a weird-looking skin, and you may notice some separation of liquid. This is good.
3. Carefully remove the dish from the oven, cover (e.g with cling wrap), and place in the refrigerator for 8 hours.
4. Carefully skim the cream into a bowl. You essentially want to separate the harder, buttery top from the liquid in the bottom. Stir well until the skin is mixed into the cream.
5. At this point you will have clotted cream, but it may have some slightly harder bits in it because of the leftover skin. You can use the cream like this, if you like it. However, if you want to be a really perfect creamy texture, take a very fine sieve, and push the cream through the sieve to get rid of the chunkier bits. It's a bit of work to get all of the cream through, but well worth it!
Scones (makes 9 good-size scones):
Ingredients:
- 2 cups / 225 grams self-raising flour, or all purpose flour + 2 tsp of baking powder (if you have good all-purpose GF flour, you can use that).
- pinch of salt
- 3.5 tbsp/ 55 grams cold butter
- 2 tbsp/ 25 grams white sugar
- 3/4 cup / 150 ml milk
- 1 egg, beaten
Preparation:
1. Preheat oven to 220c/425 f. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or lightly grease it.
2. Pour the flour into a large bowl and combine with the salt. Dice the butter into small dice, and add to the bowl. Using your fingers, rub the butter into the flour. The mixture should start to become crumbly and look a bit like sand.
3. Stir in the sugar and the milk until the mixture is just combined into a dough. It's very important not to over-work scones, or they won't rise properly. You should get a dough that is soft and a little bit sticky. If it's too dry and crumbly, add a bit more milk, 1 tsp at a time. If it's too sticky then add a bit more flour, but be careful not to add to much flour or the dough will become hard.
4. Lightly flour a surface and turn the dough onto it. Knead very lightly (again, do not overwork!), and form a round, about 2 cm/ 3/4 inch thick. Use a 5 cm/2 in cookie cutter (or a round glass) to cut out the scones and place on the lined baking sheet. It's best to use a sharp cutter and to cut firmly in one quick movement ,as too much messing around with the edges tends to seal them, which prevents rising. Take any left-over dough and gently knead it back into a round to cut some more scones.
5. Brush the tops of the scones with the beaten egg, and bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes, until risen and golden. Allow to cool on a wire rack, and serve with clotted cream and good jam.
Enjoy!
