I’ve not had a lot of success with my scone baking in the past, in fact they could be used as hockey pucks as they are generally so solid and dry but when a friend of mine raved about lemon and poppy seed scones from a nearby tearoom I decided to have a bash at them. Jack thinks that the browner scones looked overdone, I think they were supposed to be paler but they all tasted fine. I gave some to a friend and she says they tasted even better toasted – it enhances the lemon flavour – I’d never thought of toasting scones before.
I found a recipe online, but tweaked it a wee bit by adding a few drops of lemon essence to the lemon juice as for me there’s no possibility of something tasting too lemony. I’ve baked these scones twice now and they’ve worked perfectly, but I’m in two minds about the poppy seeds. They don’t add any flavour I believe but obviously add texture. They have a tendency to get stuck in your teeth though. I happened to have a packet of poppy seeds anyway but when they are finished I don’t know if I would bother buying more, I might prefer the scones without them. The ingredients below make 20 scones so you might want to halve the quantities.
900g self-raising flour
225g margarine
85g sugar
30g poppy seeds
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1 lemon
a few drops of lemon essence
2 eggs
333ml milk
Mix the self-raising flour, margarine, sugar, poppy seeds, lemon juice and lemon essence in a bowl and rub together until the mix resembles fine breadcrumbs. Then add the eggs and milk and mix to a dough.
Tip the dough out onto a floured surface and roll out to a thickness of 4 cm or 1.5 inches, cut into rounds using a 70 mm/ 2.75″ (ish) cutter. Put them onto a baking tray. Brush with milk ( I missed this bit out as I used my pastry brush for a DIY project a while ago!)
Put into the middle of a pre-heated oven at 160 Centigrade for 20 minutes. Gas mark 3, or Fahrenheit 325.
Delicious with butter but for a super lemon experience why not try lemon curd.
Sound lovely. Too bad none of the stores around me have flour. I ordered 10 pounds online and they said it would be 3-4 weeks until delivery. I’ll try your recipe then because I do love scones.
Teri,
It’s the same here but I had a few bags of flour in my cupboards already as I bought extra as I thought we would fall off a cliff towards the end of the year with no Brexit deal. That has gone completely off the news! I hope you enjoy the scones when you get around to them. Thanks for dropping by and taking the time to comment.
Katrina
These sound so good. I will have to try them. Maybe I will make lemon curd to go with them because that sounds delicious.
Jennifer,
If you don’t have lemon curd in your shops it is easy to make at home too. I even made raspberry curd when I had a surplus of wild raspberries and wanted a change from jam.
My mouth is watering!
Joan,
Mine too, I’ll have to make more!
I’m a hopeless baker, so could you just make extra next time and send me them? Thanks… ?
FictionFan,
Hmm, if only our postal service was faster!!