Alfreda Nesbitt’s Plain Scones

Preheat convection Oven to 200 degrees Celsius
225 grams of self raising flour
Pinch of Salt
50 grams of butter (at room temperature)
25 grams of Caster Sugar (refined sugar)
150 ml Milk

Sift flour into a bowl and rub in butter, using fingertips. Next stir in sugar and salt, then with a knife use to mix in milk a little at a time. Flour your hands and quickly knead lightly, turn out onto a floured board, gently roll that and cut into rounds (4 or 5 cm) pastry cutter, approx. 3 cm thick. Bake for 12-15 minutes on parchment paper covered metal trays.

In August 2016, for our first cooking class of Our World Edventure, Nicole’s Great Aunt Alfreda Nesbitt taught us how to make the family’s scone recipe! We loved sharing our Cornish heritage with our daughters.

The girls: Lauren, Paula, Harmony, Joy and Hope all gathered around the conservatory table to learn to make the family recipe for scones. Nicole was there to create a photo documentary of the cooking class and Ryan took notes while enjoying a glass of Alan’s fine Greek Cognac.

Alfreda weighed the flour out on a scale and then each girl sifted out the flour into their bowl. Each put a pinch of salt into the flour and then weighed the softened butter before putting it into each bowl. Alfreda prepared a bowl as well so that people could see the consistency of the pastry dough. Her instructions follow:

Covering your fingers with a bit of flour, mix the butter into the flour, so it has a fine consistency. Lift it up, sift it together a bit with your fingers and let it fall back into the bowl.

Next, put the sugar in by weight, and very gently stir in in with your fingers. You don’t want to make them heavy. Everything needs to stay light and separated.

Pour in the mix and then your milk, cut it in with a knife back and forth until it is blended. (If you end up with too much milk, just add in a bit of flour).

Then, pour the dough out of the bowl onto your floured prep surface and make it into a dough loaf, but not too much handling (you don’t knead it!), just enough to bring it together about 4-5 cm thick. The less you handle the scones, the fluffier they will turn out.

Hint: You could leave the sugar out and add cheese in to make savory scones.

Hint: Don’t double or triple the recipe. It is much more difficult to have it turn out fluffy. Rather, prepare in batches.

At this point, you take a round cookie cutter and cut out the scones! Place them on the parchment paper covered cookie sheets.

Then place in the oven (or if you have one, an AGA cast iron stove/oven from Sweden, but made in England) for 12-15 minutes until the tops are golden, the bottoms are firm, and the centers are fluffy and soft.

The true Cornish cream tea was a very soft bread split with jam and creme. Now it is always scones.

A modern Cornish Cream Tea involves:
Tea (the Nesbitts prefer Yorkshire Tea; Stuart’s favorite is PG Tips)
Scones in half and served open faced with jam and Clotted Cream (Alfreda’s favorite is Rodda’s Clotted Cream).

Important note: If you are from Cornwall, the jam goes on the scone first and then it is finished with Clotted Cream on top. However, those in Devon (like cousins Georgia and Emily) put the clotted cream on first and then the jam. So, no pressure, but make sure prepare your Scones correctly!

Note: If you don’t have self-rising flour, you can use plain flour but you would need to put a spoonful of baking power.

Of course we had to have a friendly competition for whose scones turned out best — everyone chose their own!

Alfreda shared some of her memories about making scones as a child. “We all made scones. It was such a simple thing. My mother always made scones. We used to bake at school. I used to have to help make the pastry and pastys for the pastors from about 11 years old.”

Alfreda told about making delicious homemade Cornish clotted cream in her childhood: “To make the clotted cream using fresh rich milk from a Jersey cow. Let the cream rise for about 12 hours. Put it on a low heat for a couple hours until the cream on top forms a crust. Chill and skim off the proper Cornish clotted cream. You can use the skim milk left over to add to pig feed of barley to fatten them up. It could also be used in cooking, but we wouldn’t use it in our tea or for drinking because it has a funny flavor once heated for hours.”

 

Alfreda also remembered some of her daughter, Jayne’s cooking triumphs in high school: “During the GCE, students usually take 8-10 subjects and even more. Jayne took domestic science. She chose a recipe with herrings although she had never cooked with them before. Alan had to go all the way to Truro to pick them up. The teacher was horrified because Jayne was one of their best students. Thankfully she ended up scoring the highest score!”