Whether you pronounce it scohnes or scawns , nothing tops a scone better than home-made jam.
Thanks to my friend Deborah, I happened to have three home-made jams to top the scones I made with lemon zest and sour cream. Man are they fluffy and light!
I prepared a plate with the three smallest scones, added fresh butter, and a quantity of each jam.
I started with the peach-hot pepper jam, which I’d opened the day the package of jams arrived, then worked clockwise around the plate.
peach-hot pepper jam
Peach-hot pepper – a perfect match with the buttery-sour creaminess of the scones! Yum! It’s tastier now than last time, thanks to time to age in the container.
blueberry-ginger jam
Blueberry-ginger – I could eat this one all day! Not too sweet, just a nice burst of ginger.
rhubarb-ginger jam
Rhubarb-ginger – Deborah got this one exactly right to my tastes. Not too sweet, nice astringency, tartness worthy of the rhubarb herb.
I liked them all! None was too sweet, all let the fruit or herb shine through, something most commercial jams fail to do by being too dang sweet.
=(^+^)=
Yeah, this is a cat blog. I know. So here are the stars of this blog, Andy and Dougy:
sexy Andy!
Dougy in “dreamy boy” pose
Hi Mr. Doug, Dougy & Andy! Mew Mew! Mom asks if scones are hard to make? Did Dougy & Andy get a little sample of your baking treat? Tee hee hee.
No, they are simple enough, but they have lots of ingredients and are messy to make. I discovered the reason my sour cream-lemon scones took twice as long to bake was simple: I accidentally doubled the amount of sour cream called for in the recipe! (They were excellent, however, and I think I would make them “wrong” again if I use sour cream.)
Here’s a recipe that is pretty much identical to the family recipe:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/79470/simple-scones/
These scones remind me of a breakfast place back in Connecticut that Rick and I used to go to on the weekend. They had the best blueberry-oatmeal scones.
Always good to see Andy and Dougy!
Yum! I happen to have those two ingredients on hand, and I may just see if I can recreate that combo!
You make man sized scones…why mess around with small ones, eh? The jams look delicious…however the peach hot pepper, I can do without…I know, no one asked me. hehe That was so nice of Deb to give you some jams. Peeps can be so kind.
Jean
The peach-hot pepper was a surprisingly tasty combination. The ones with ginger I knew I’d like since that’s one of my favorite spices.
The scones turned out bigger than I expected considering they only had two cups of flour in them. Or was it three?? Anyway, in future, I’ll make a half recipe since it took me three days to get through them. The second day, they were OK, but the third day…! “Best fresh”
All those jams sound great and the scones look good too. And of course, Andy and Dougy are adorable.
Andy and Dougy tell me to tell you “Meow!” Yes, they all were winners! I’m glad I decided to try the jams on scones. They were special, and the scones buttery, light! Yum!
I take it this is the post I had inadvertently inspired. Great photography with very tempting scones and jams, but how did you make those light and fluffy scones? We are cats – we are curious!
Meows and purrs to the two adorables!
Yes, you got it right! The scones were based on a basic family recipe, though I looked up sour cream scones on the Internet. The recipe was basically the same as the family one, though the family one called for sultanas. I substituted lemon zest from one lemon since I don’t particularly like sultanas in quick breads. I used a food processor to incorporate the butter into the dry ingredients, and followed the basic rule of thumb of not over-working the dough when I combined wet and dry ingredients. I’m one of those people who doesn’t follow recipes closely a lot of the time, making substitutions and modifications to suit my taste. I did try to be a bit more faithful to the family recipe here, though, as noted, I “fudged” on it a bit! One big exception: had I baked them as long as the recipe called for, I would have been eating raw dough!
Andy and Dougy are pleased to return the meows!
Here’s a link to the specific recipe I checked for sour cream scones. I see it calls for two cups, not three of flour as I recalled in an earlier reply.
As noted, the quantities and ingredients are basically identical to the family recipe, which just lists ingredients and presumes you’ve made them hundreds of times so don’t need to know things like bake time or how to work the dough!
http://www.stonegableblog.com/sour-cream-scones/
Thank you for a detailed response.
A reader once called me “intrepid,” and I took it as a compliment. So although I have never made scones because I’ve never liked the ones I tried, I’ll be intrepid enough to try your recipe and see what happens. After all, if it doesn’t come out edible, it’ll be your fault! As children say, “He made me do it!”
I will make one modification, though: homemade non-dairy clabbered milk instead of sour cream.
Meows and purrs to The Adorables from the Cat Gang! 😸
It should work! The sugar should be pulsed in a food processor to break it down a bit so it incorporates better into the wet mixture. I think I would add vanilla to taste when I make them again and try currents instead of sultanas or other dried fruit. Alsd, can’t think what they call it, but it’s larger crystals of sugar than regular sugar that comes in plain, dyed colors, smoked, and in other variations that is sprinkled on top of scones and other goodies. I don’t keep it around and didn’t think I wanted more sweetening in my scones.
I’ll try to experiment by using light brown sugar and raisins. Let’s see what happens!
I think the brown sugar idea sounds tasty, though I’d skip the raisins, given my biases. Let me know how it turns out!
I certainly will!
I made blueberry scones for breakfast. I discovered why it took so long to bake the first batch: I put in twice the recipe amount of sour cream! (Though they were very tasty…I might make the mistake the new way of fixing them.)
You are inspiring me to examine the reason I have never liked scones and to make the ones I will like!
I made a half batch of blueberry scones this morning. Dried fruit would have worked better, but the scones with fresh blueberries were not so sweet, so more to my taste! I may try the next batch with dried currents. The brown sugar version you propose is in the line up, too. Though it might be sweeter than I like, perhaps I can substitute some oatmeal to the flour, making them more like solid oatmeal with brown sugar. I do like hot oatmeal with brown sugar and dried fruit,
You are really getting deep into my brain with all this talk about scones! I’ll have to make them on Sunday otherwise it’ll drive me mad!
Enjoy!
Thanks! 😸
My pleasure!
I cannot eat that stuff pictured, but as Bob Hope sang, “Thanks for the Memory”>
I have dietary restrictions myself, though there is only the totally banned one of star fruit. Everything else I can eat in moderation.
Wonderful scones and jams – with plenty of fruit – ! Amitiés – et caresses pour les kities 🙂
I definitely appreciate my friend’s thoughtfulness for sending the jams! Between the surprisingly light and fluffy scones and the jam, I had a huge treat! Delicious!
The plate looks and sounds yummy, I’m hungry.
It was! Yum!
Oh no! food is taking over blogs!!
Only briefly. Not to worry! I know the main reason people stop her is to see more of Andy and Dougy, but Andre and Charles’ human, my friend Deborah, was so kind to send me homemade jams that I felt readers of this blog should know about her kindness! Cat people are nice people! (So are dog people!)
Only briefly. Not to worry! I know the main reason people stop here is to see more of Andy and Dougy, but Andre and Charles’ human, my friend Deborah, was so kind to send me homemade jams that I felt readers of this blog should know about her kindness! Cat people are nice people! (So are dog people!)
I will never forget my grandmother’s scones… They looked the same as yours. Here in Ireland scones are muffin-sized.
They resemble what we call biscuits here, but are lighter-textured, include a small amount of sugar in the batter and/or the top, and include sultanas or other small dried fruit in them or (in my case) lemon zest. That is to say, they are fancy biscuits!
That is how my Grandmother made them, too, in the round, cut into eights. Until I Googled “scone” to get some sense of what I could do instead of add sultanas (I don’t particularly like these or other dried fruit in anything but cooked in oatmeal), I’d never seen them made in round shape, like American biscuits.
Not as much fun as wedges!
It’s been a very long time since I had any homemade jam!!
Me, too! Deborah made me a happy, happy old coot!
England is divided by the pronunciation.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/23/how-do-you-pronounce-scone-answer-says-a-lot-english-language-day-shakespeare-birthday
Brilliant! Thank you very much for the link! I shared it on my lifeline on Facebook as well because my blog posts there as well.
For those who don’t know, you live in Hannover and write a very interesting blog about your visits to museums, theaters, and the vicissitudes of daily life, among other things.
Though it is in German, those who read German or use the translate app on WordPress are well rewarded by following your blog!
Here’s a link:
http://inhannover.wordpress.com/
Don’t make me blush, Douglas, red is not my colour .. it’s the colour of my new fridge …
Oh, and just if you are interested, though being a German I have my preference for scone, too – in my idiom they are pronounced rhyming to stone. The Stone of Scone … if you are a bad baker, it might be 😉
Ha! Ha! I’ve made some of those stone-like quick breads! The very first yeast bread I made was so solid, it made a “clunk” sound when I tossed it in the waste bin. even birds rejected it.
I pronounce it the same way. That makes us posh speakers on the one word!
In England it’s ‘skohnes’ or ‘skonns’. Skohnes is posh and ‘skonns’ is just the common folk. And your lovely photos did actually make my mouth water!
I appreciate the explanation. I’ve always pronounced it skones, not realizing I was putting on a posh accent! LOL!
I’m pretty certain my Grandmother McKenzie (who was born in Scotland) pronounced it the same way, though she wasn’t hoity toity by any means.
She died in 1974, so my memory of how she pronounced it could be wrong. Interesting. I;m starting to think she did pronounce it the second way.
Totally off topic is how people there pronounce “taco” “TAY-co” when “a” usually is the soft “aw” in Received Pronunciation.
Drives me nuts every time I hear it! Pronounce it like a ding dang Mexican, dang nab it. LOL! If Americans can get it right with our impossibly inferior linguistic skills, so can the English!
What beautiful jams ! And so perfect with scones (scohns) and cream. Yes it is good to inslude photos of the cats.
Hey ~meow~ the kitty boys are the raison d’être for this blog, so I need to make sure there is something of kitties in posts!
As for the proper way to eat scones, I don’t have easy access to clotted cream. The unsalted butter was as close to that as I could come – not the same! – but there was the richness of the sour cream in the scone plus the butter.
I definitely went over my calcium limit for the day. (On dialysis, I need to do that!) I confess to wanting more of these delicious little slabs of joy. LOL!
Oh, yes. Being American, I had coffee with them, though I do have leaf tea (Oolong and Darjeeling) and a proper pot to steep them in. I think I should give the next batch a “tea time” approach!
I see you can order clotted cream, though the idea kind of turns me off for safety reasons that probably aren’t anywhere but in my mind.
I used to do butter and jam with scones. Until my diagnosis of diabetes this year. So strong limits on sugar, sodium and cabohydrates now. But it is good that the boys are also included.
I hope you are able to control your diabetes with diet or medication, and never have to go into dialysis! Though it is possible to live reasonably normally on dialysis, it is time consuming.
People who still work or like to travel have the most complications dealing with dialysis. As a retiree, it is a piece of cake!
I get regular blood analysis in dialysis, so know where I’ve been weak or on track in my efforts to follow dietary restrictions.
I’m not diabetic, one blessing, but the analysis includes a blood sugar measurement. I always show an acceptable level, though my falling down points are potassium, phosphorus, and water.
Water consumption in excess of what my kidneys and dialysis can handle result in painful cramps.
The others can be controlled with a potassium blocker pill and better attention paid to those foods high in the “no-no” components!
(Potatoes are hard to give up or eat less regularly, but I had no problem giving up bananas, a fruit I can take or leave.)
Oh for the days when we just ate whatever whenever !
No kidding!
To properly eat potatoes, I have to cut them into chunks, soak them in water overnight, drain them, soak them again for a few hours, drain them, then boil the heck out of them in new water! Of course, my favorite is baked potato with sour cream and cheese! (I can eat thoat very occasionally, though it violates the limited milk and milk products and no baked potatoes since I eat the skin as well rules!)
Then there is star fruit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carambola
That one literally will kill people on dialysis. Our kidneys can’t filter out the component, a poison, that occurs in that insipid fruit. Glad I tasted it and didn’t care for it so I don’t lust for it now!
This looks delicious!
Mmmm! That is was! That was the first time I tried scones with lemon zest and sour cream, and it’s a winner. My food processor is tiny – one and a half cups – so I have to make the full recipe in two shots to incorporate the butter into the dry ingredients. That showed me that making a half recipe (more than enough for me, since it makes enough for two meals) is practical. The happy realization: That I can make scones more regularly!