Buttermilk Scones

I don't know what came over me, but I suddenly wanted to bake… and a box of pre-mix just wouldn't do (I have a few of those at home). Then one word came out to me out of the blue… scones!  It didn't look too difficult to make and I actually had all the ingredients except for buttermilk (which I substituted with whole milk and white vinegar).  Unfortunately, I had a brain freeze and instead of reading 150g of buttermilk in the recipe, I read 1.5 cups of buttermilk.  So I made too much buttermilk and now I'll be making more scones later this week so that I don't waste it. =P

The recipe that I used came from my favourite baking blog and the blogger actually had a lot of useful tips to ensure that a nice, fluffy scone came out. Like usual, I made my own modifications to the receipe which included cutting down on the sugar and adding in some chocolate chips to half of the dough and dried cranberries to the rest. Also, I didn't have a scone cutter, so I just shaped it into round circles.

I'm quite happy with the results, though I wish it was a bit more buttery and fluffy (I must have mixed the dough too much or something). Anyway I'm excited to try some more adjustments to the next batch that I make. Stay tuned… 

Ingredients:
200g self-raising flour
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
50g cold butter cut into small pieces
150mL buttermilk
Some milk for glacing
Some chocolate chips and/or dried cranberries

Method:

1. Make the buttermilk (for 1 cup of buttermilk, take 1 tbsp of white vinegar and mix with a little less than 1 cup of whole milk).
2. Sieve flour 3 times into a big mixing bowl, stir in the salt. Rub in the butter till crumb-like (do not over do this part). Stir in the sugar.
3. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture, pour in the buttermilk, holding back a little just in case it is too much. Stir to mix with a pair of chopsticks. Dough should be sticky.
4. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured working surface. Pat dough into 2cm thick. When working on this, if dough is too dry, add in the buttermilk which is on hold from (3).
5. Add the chocolate chips and/or dried cranberries as appropriate.
6. Cut dough with 5.5cm floured cutter. Pressed cutter firmly onto dough and do not twist or turn the cutter. If you don't have a cutter than just shape the dough into a round circle.
7. Glaze the surface of each scone with some milk.
8. Bake on a lined tray in a preheated oven at 220 - 225C for 13 - 15 minutes.