Scones — well, almost

Scones are something I don’t get to have very often. Coffee shops I visit rarely seem to have them, and I’ve never had the chance to try making them.

Up until last weekend, that is. My grandmother recently returned from a trip to Ireland, and one of the things she brought back for me was a scones recipe. It looked good, and not too difficult, so I decided to give it a shot.

As you can probably tell from the title of this post, my attempt at making them didn’t go so well. Everything was fine, up until it came time to mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.

I made my well in the dry ingredients, and then slowly poured in the wet ingredients. I started stirring, thinking what I had looked more like muffin batter than the dough the recipe talked about. I continued stirring, hoping that it maybe just took a lot of work to take the mixture from batter to dough.

After a few minutes, I was fully frustrated and only marginally closer to having dough. I glanced back down at the recipe and noticed something — a “tip,” written near the top of the recipe. A “tip” that said I probably wouldn’t need all of the wet ingredients, and so should start by pouring only half of it into the dry ingredients. A “tip” that was written nowhere near the step it was describing.

Needless to say, I wasn’t very happy. Yes, it was mostly my fault — I really should have paid more attention to the tip (by which I mean I should have read it before starting), and not written it off as a suggestion that would potentially make the recipe better. But, at the same time, I really feel that something that important really shouldn’t be listed as a “tip;” I believe it should probably be written as one of the steps in the recipe.

Regardless, I had a bad feeling my scones were ruined. I tried fixing the matter — I added more of the dry ingredients — and eventually ended up with something that resembled a dough well enough that I could form the scones and bake them.

Unfortunately, they didn’t come out quite right. They didn’t look like normal scones (more like hockey pucks, if I’m being honest), and their texture wasn’t quite right. They tasted okay, and were certainly edible, but they definitely weren’t the scones I was hoping for.

But the good point in all of this? I know exactly where I went wrong. I plan on trying again this weekend, and I’m optimistic that everything will come together the way it’s supposed to. And then I should have a new recipe to share with you.