Cheese Scones (with chilli)

Now as you can probably tell from my previous three blog posts, savoury baking isn’t my usual thing, however, my grandparents are visiting and my Granny is diabetic so I thought it would be nice to make something they could eat. Since watching the first round of the Sport Relief bake-off I’ve liked the idea of making cheese scones and I found this recipe on the BBC Good Food website. I’m not sure that I’ve ever made regular scones before so this recipe and method was brand new to me so the lack of major disasters was a plus!

This recipe uses cup measurements but for the cheese it said ‘250ml’ which I wasn’t quite sure how to measure. After reading the comments on the page I opted for 200g of cheese which worked really well as they were lovely and cheesy but not overpoweringly so. Next time I make these I will definitely add more chilli powder as you can barely taste the amount I put in and it would have really produced a nice flavour with the cheese.

One thing that is great about this recipe is that it doesn’t involve the time consuming part of rubbing the butter into the flour that I’ve always heard about, you just add oil! It also makes these less fatty and so a bit better for you. Another thing I would change for making them in future would be to add a touch more milk before taking it out to flatten as the outcome of my scones wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked. However, the majority of them rose really well which I was pleased with.

Overall though I would say these are definitely easy scones to make, perfect to knock up quickly for lunch and they taste lovely too! Personally, I loved them warm with a bit of marmite on, YUM.

Here is the recipe:

2 cups of flour (I used self-raising as I wanted to give them the best chance of rising!)

3 tsp baking powder

Large pinch of salt

Chilli powder (I used about 1 tsp and didn't think that was enough)

200g grated strong cheddar cheese

3 tsp vegetable oil

125ml milk

1 egg

Preheat the oven at 180°C

Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and chilli powder into a large bowl. Add the cheese and mix through the flour mixture.

Beat the egg and milk together in a separate bowl and add in the oil.

Pour the wet mixture into the flour mixture and using a metal spoon, mix the dough until it clumps together but is not too dry. If too dry, splash a bit more milk in to use up the flour. (I used about 1tsp more than the recipe).

Press the dough out onto a flat, clean, floured surface until it is about 5mm thick, then fold it over on top of itself (this gives the finished scones the natural “break” to cut open), flatten it again using the palm of your hand. Do not use a rolling pin as it is too heavy and will prevent the scones from rising.

Cut out the scones using a round cutter (I used a small one and made about 15 scones). Place them on a greased baking tray and bake in the oven for 15-20minutes.