Christmas Scones

Christmas Scones

Ingredients

• 250 g self-raising flour + a little extra for dusting
• 50 g unsalted butter + extra for greasing
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp salt
• 30 g caster sugar
• 100 g mincemeat
• 50 g marzipan
• 50 ml brandy
• 85 ml full-fat milk + extra for brushing on top of your scones

Instructions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 220ºC/200ºC fan.
2. Lightly grease a baking sheet with butter (or alternatively, I use a bake-o-glide sheet and greasing isn’t necessary).
3. Put the self-raising flour (250g) into a large bowl. Cut the butter (50g) into cubes and add it to the flour.
4. Gently rub the butter into the flour until it is the consistency of breadcrumbs.
5. Cut the marzipan (50g) into small cubes.
6. Add the caster sugar (30g), baking powder (½ tsp), salt (¼ tsp), marzipan, mincemeat (100g) to the flour and butter. Give it a quick stir to ensure that all of the ingredients are evenly distributed.
7. Make a well in the centre and add the full-fat milk (85ml) and brandy (50ml). I like to keep a tablespoon or two of milk back to add at the end to help collect up any stray bits of flour.
8. With as little action as possible, mix the milk and brandy into the dry ingredients using your hands until the mixture has come together. If there’s any flour left at the bottom then add a touch more milk to help collect it up.
9. Sprinkle a dusting of flour onto your work surface. Place the dough onto the floured surface and pat it flat, about 1½ inches thick (don’t use a rolling pin).
10. Using a round cutter (I used a 6cm diameter cutter to make 9 small scones), press into the dough and carefully lift out the scone and place it onto your baking sheet. Cut as many scones as you can, ball up the remaining dough, pat flat and repeat cutting out more scones until all of your dough has been used.
11. Brush a little milk onto the top of each scone.
12. Place into the oven and cook for 12-15 minutes until they are cooked (I like to tap on the bottom to see if they sound hollow, as you would do with bread).
13. Once cooked, remove them from the oven and place onto a wire rack to cool (or eat them while they’re still warm!).