I have never been truly happy with my scones. Please help.

[GertrudePerkins]

Cheese scones I can do, but my plain scones are always a bit average. What's the best recipe for enormous, fluffy, slightly sweet scones?

My mum makes fab scones, but uses buttermilk and 1/2 soda bread flour 1/2 plain flour, but she's in Ireland. I cant get soda bread flour here !

Watching with interest, I make soda bread scones too but they need to be eaten hot and don't keep well...

25g Sugar
225g self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
25g butter
1 teaspoon baking powder
cup of milk - add as required.

450g sr flour
75g butter
75g sugar
200ml milk
2 large eggs
2 tsp bicarb

preheat oven to 200 or 220.

mix the flour and bicarb then dice the butter and rub it into a crumble. Add the sugar. Whisk the eggs and then whisk the milk into the eggs. Take a dribble of milk out and put it in a pot, and a generous amount of sugar. Mix it and put it to one side for a bit.
Slowly add the milk and egg mix to the crumble and mix with a wooden spoon. Do NOT mix into a dough and do NOT roll out like recipes tell you to! When it's all mixed in, flour your hands, grab some and and briefly roll into a ball and put down on a greased tray.
When they're all done, take the milk, egg and sugar mix and brush the tops of the scones with it.
Shove them in the oven until they smell delicious. Usually about 12-15 minutes.
When you take them out, put them on a wire rack and cover them with a clean teatowel until they are properly cooled - that stops them drying out.

to clarify - the sugar that goes into the milk and egg for the glaze is extra sugar, don't take it from the 75g

great, cheers all

we do the patting-not-rolling thing with cheese scones - definitely helps. I will pick one of these recipes to try on Weds.

Biggest tip regardless of the recipe. Treat them like pastry. Do not over mix. Handle lightly & as little liquid as you can get away with. Opposite of bread.

For nice big scones you need to cut them big in the first place. I always shape mine to be taller than I think necessary before they go in the oven and they come out perfect!

I'm sure I read somewhere about laying one half of the pressed flat mixture on top of the first half and then cut with a straight edged cutter...any one heard of this or is it just me?

Dan lepard'a everyday scones turned out well for me. Can't find a link, sorry. He uses cream and milk (maybe buttercream and yoghurt) for liquid and makes a point about cooking them in a deeper tin rather than a flat tray (I used a roasting tin). I think this made them softer.

Agree liquid should be a mix of cream and milk, or milk and yoghurt. Makes them really fluffy.

Rachel Allen's scones are lovely and light. She uses buttermilk and 00 grade flour. I can't easily link from my phone, but I am sure a Google search would bring it up x

The ones Ds1 made at school were lovely. They used milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice - a cheaper and more readily available way to make "buttermilk" apparently.

Cream of tartar. It makes them slightly bumpy on top but they taste incredible.

Rachel Allen's recipe for light sweet scones is my favourite.

thanks so much everyone
after all the talk of buttermilk, i did a delia recipe with buttermilk and egg in

the scones were magnificent to taste, wonky in the extreme though despite my snarling at the DC if they so much as thought about twisting the cutters.

only problem is now I have leftover buttermilk, so I guess that means more scones tomorrow...

when my mum does her scones with buttermilk scones she cooks them in a bin tin to keep the shape.

bun. not bin

I had great results from Nigella's recipe.