Strawberry | Bark Time = everything and nothing

Marks Ultimate Summer Scones

What can be better than home baked scones with poshed up sweet strawberry mousse and freshly whipped cream (heaven had arrived)? This really is my ultimate summer dessert!

Here is what you will require for your own slice of heavenly delight.

STRAWBERRY MOUSSE

Ingredients:

250g of fresh strawberries
2tsp of soft brown sugar
Good dash of proper quality Balsamic vinegar

Method:

Chop up the strawberries and place in a bowl, sprinkle the sugar of the top and stir. Finish for now by drizzling your Balsamic vinegar over them. If you do not have a quality Balsamic then omit this part rather than use a cheap one as the sweetness we are after will be replaced with a more vinegary taste and ruin your flavour experience. Pop the bowl in the fridge.

WHIPPED CREAM

Ingredients:

250ml of double cream
50g of casted sugar
1tsp milk powder (it helps the peaks to stay put)

Method:

Place cream, milk powder and sugar in a mixing bowl. Whisk until firm peaks form. Pop in the fridge.

And finally we move onto the main event…

SCONES

Ingredients:

150g of flour
2tbsp of sugar
3tsp of baking powder
Pinch of salt
5tbsp of butter, cold and cut into cubes (spot the American input there)
125ml of milk

Method:

Put the butter in the fridge and go have a cup of tea for ½ hour.

Preheat your oven to 220C. Grease a sheet of baking paper and place on a large baking sheet.

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a bowl.

Retrieve your cold butter from the fridge and cut into cubes, small cubes and return to the fridge for 5 minutes.

With a pastry knife or cold finger tips (hold a bag of peas from the freezer for a few minutes to cool down) blend the butter into the dry ingredients mixture and rub until it resembles coarse crumbs.

As you mix in the butter you will have warmed it up so pop it into the fridge for 5 minutes to get cold again.

Now comes the really really really important part!

Retrieve and pour in the milk and stir as little as possible to get the mixture to form a soft dough. The dough can be rough and not fully mixed as long as you can see the main ingredients have spread throughout. It should look almost unfinished, this is perfect for what we want.

Wet you hands under a cold tap. Now as if you where picking up a hedgehog gently pull out a clump of dough about the size of a nectarine and place on the prepared sheet and give it a gentle press down to form a disk. When your tray is filled it should look like a collection of “bad hair days” so now you bake until golden, about 12 minutes should do the trick.

Now when all the pieces of our ultimate summer scone are ready it is time to put them all together! This is best done whilst the scones are still warm.