cranberry & lemon scones

With the crazy cold weather over the last week, I've been drinking record cups of tea. I reached four earlier in the week and this time yesterday, I decided the cup just wasn't quite big enough and made myself a whole pot to sip away at. I've really grown to love tea and seem to buying a lot of it too. There's two boxes in my drawer at work, one sitting on my desk at home and countless boxes in the pantry drawer. And well, perfect with a cup of tea is the ever humble scone - easy to make and guaranteed deliciousness in a quick 25 minutes!  I've been making a fair few scones lately to tie in with the tea drinking.

Preheat oven to 220 degrees. Line a baking tray. In a large bowl, rub together 85g cubed butter into 250g sifted self-raising flour until the mix resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in 1 tsp baking powder, 2 tbsp caster sugar, 50g dried cranberries, zest of 1 lemon and 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon. In a separate bowl, beat 1 egg and 200mL buttermilk and then add to the dry mix. Lightly, use a spatula to bring the ingredients together to make a soft dough. Tip out the dough onto a lightly floured board and roll out to a 2.5cm thickness. Stamp out rounds using a 5cm cutter and transfer to a baking tray (push them together). Lightly brush the tops with milk.

Bake in the oven for 15 minutes until well risen and golden. 

Cool until warm on a wire rack.

I highly recommend you eat scones with jam and cream but in the absence of cream (unless you are one of those people who perpetually have a bottle sitting in the fridge), jam and butter make a satisfactory substitute. Love how the butter goes all melty on a warm scone! Raspberry or Strawberry jam are my preferred jams. And I love how the brushed milk on the surface of these scones makes them that little bit crunchy in texture - I think I'll brush all my scones with milk from now on!