Davina’s cheesy apple savoury scones

A few years ago the television presenter Davina McCall - best known for Big Brother - decided to give up sugar. I was vaguely aware that she had written a cookery book and I am trying to cut down on sugar so had a look on Amazon - and discovered she has written loads of books!

I liked the sound of her book Sugar Free in a Hurry as I don’t have a lot of time to cook these days - between a full time job and parenting a toddler and trying to keep the house in order too (which my husband helps with, but I am the only one who cooks).

 I made these apple and cheese scones from the book, which were really easy to throw together - and fun for my daughter to help make too!

Follow this link to see the recipe.

Personally I couldn’t taste the apple and would add a lot more if I made this again, though would have to experiment with the consistency of the dough to make sure it wasn’t too wet. I also used extra nature cheddar and even then think it could have used a bit more. The scones turned out well though and I would definitely make some sort of savoury scones again using this recipe as a basis and maybe playing around a bit with the different flavours. If you have a really good recipe for savoury scones let me know in the comments!

Utah Scones - a different take on doughnuts?

The letter that Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker has chosen for Alphabakes this month is a bit challenging - U. This is the second time through the alphabet in the blogging challenge which I co-host with Ros, and last time around I thought quite creatively and made this Umbongo cake from a recipe I devised myself, which I was really pleased with.

This time my mind went to Utah and my United Cakes of America cookery book, which I haven't used for a little while. I visited Utah as part of a US road trip in 2012 and ate some lovely food. The cookery book didn't let me down with a recipe for Utah Scones - these are pretty different to English scones as they are deep-fried. The book said they were similar to what people call "frybread" elsewhere in the US; as part of the same trip I ate Navajo fry bread in Arizona and these did remind me a bit of that, but they also reminded me of churros (only more dough-y) and also a little like doughnuts. You need to make the dough the day before you want it and be very careful when you are deep frying but otherwise these are pretty easy and taste really good with the recommended honey butter; my boyfriend had them with chocolate sauce and loved them.

This recipe makes about 24 so I'd recommend halving the quantities, though I didn't.
You need:

2 cups buttermilk
7g dried yeast
2 tbsp. warm water
5 cups plain flour
1 tbsp. vegetable oil plus extra for deep frying
1 tbsp. caster sugar
2 eggs
1.5 tsp baking powder

to serve: optional-
softened butter, runny honey
icing sugar
chocolate sauce

Dissolve the yeast in a small bowl with the warm water and leave for ten minutes.

Meanwhile warm the buttermilk and place in a large bowl (or stand mixer if you have one) with all the other ingredients apart from the optional serving suggestions. Add the yeast and water and beat everything together until you have a stiff dough.

Roll the dough out onto a flat baking tray, cover with a clean tea-towel and leave to prove in a warm place for about 30 minutes.

 

 

Punch down the dough, cover with clingfilm and refrigerate overnight.

 

When you are ready to cook the dough, cut into wide strips and then cut the strips into triangles.

Heat about 1 inch of oil in a frying pan and when the oil is hot, using tongs carefully place the triangles into the oil. Allow to bubble and cook on each side for a few minutes until browned, then carefully turn over and brown on the other side.

Remove from the oil with tongs or a fish slice and drain on kitchen paper. Sprinkle with icing sugar, or serve with honey butter (beat softened butter with runny honey to taste) or chocolate sauce.

These are pretty filling and definitely more of an occasional treat but I'm glad I discovered them!

I'm sending this to Alphabakes, hosted by Ros of The More Than Occasional Baker, as the letter this month is U.

Ham and cheese scones

I recently went to Beaulieu with my family - home of Beaulieu house and abbey, the National Motor Museum, the Top Gear experience and, for 2012, a collection of every car that has featured in a James Bond film to mark the 50th anniversary. It's well worth a day out if you're in the south of England!

We decided to have a picnic and I wanted to bake something savoury. I've never actually made scones before and since this month's Alphabakes letter is H, so I decided to make ham and cheese scones. As usual, this idea came to me while I was at work so I looked on Google (during my lunch break, obviously!) and found this recipe by Barb Gertz. It's supposed to be a low-fat Weightwatchers recipe but I adapted it and it probably isn't particularly low fat any more.

It's an American recipe so it was an excuse to use the cup measures given to me by my boyfriend's mum when they went to America last year.

The recipe is quite straightforward - mix flour, baking powder and a little bit of sugar (see link above for quantities); add marg and rub to make a breadcrumb texture (I assume this is what the recipe means by 'coarse meal').

Add some grated cheese

And some ham. I used tinned ham as I could chop this into cubes quite easily and thought the pieces would be chunky enough that you could taste them when you eat the scone.

Whisk buttermilk and egg white... I had some buttermilk left over from a previous recipe.

Unfortunately I didn't have quite enough buttermillk. I thought about making up the quantity with milk, then had a better idea of something I could use that was also leftover: cheese and onion dip!

I added a spoonful or two of the dip to the scone mixture, but then found the mixture was too wet, so I had to add some extra flour to compensate. Oh well!

When the mixture was the right consistency I was able to knead it and shape it into a ball of dough and then roll it out.

I used a round cookie cutter to cut out the scones and place them on the baking sheet. You can see the flecks of ham and cheese.

After 20 minutes in the oven... ta dah!

 

These tasted really nice and I wasn't sure whether the addition of the cheese and onion dip particularly helped, but the scones did have a lovely cheese flavour and the ham made a nice change too. We enjoyed these on our picnic either spread with some butter or with some cream cheese.

As the Alphabakes letter of the month is H, I am entering my ham and cheese scones in the challenge, which I am hosting this month. Ros will be hosting next month so check out her blog from June 1st to find out what the next letter is - I can't wait to find out myself!