Scones - A Daring Baker Challenge

As always I am late posting my challenge, but I just don't think it would be right if I was on time... ANY WHO this months DB challenge was one that I knew I was going to enjoy. SCONES. Yes, that right the staple of English tea time and who wouldnt love the opportunity to make scones?
Isabel of Rollingpins and Needles and I are incredibly partial to cream tea, baked goods and most deadly of all, clotted cream. Therefore we decided for our own sake we had to do the challenge together and thus divide the amount of cream to be eaten by two. That of course didn't happen and we devoured more than is considered healthy. But needs must.


This months challenge was hosted by a DB member called Audax Artifax, who I am always astonished by the number of times and variations he is able to make each challenge. Seriously this guy makes and makes and makes things over and over again. Its kind of exhausting to witness.
The original challenge can be found here


Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!


After watching the recent Great British Bake Off for Sports Relief we decided to honour the two baking giants Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood by making Paul's Cheese Scones and Mary's plain scones (Yes I realise that I seem to deviate from the DB recipes pretty much all the time but I am pretty influenced by what I see on tv, I cant help it I'm part of a tv culture). These however were demolished so quickly we never got to take pictures of the evidence of how much clotted cream can be consumed in one sitting...


Thankfully Isabel took some pictures of the cheese scones before they were lost to our hunger.

Admire the cheesy spendidness

I then decided that as Mary's scones were so successful I would make them again for my family who also cant help but love some jam, cream and scones. I think that these are going to be my fail safe scone recipe now, they were light and fluffy and have definitely converted me to the Berry way of baking.

Rough n Ready

Apricot jam counts as one of your 5 a day...

Cheese Scones
The recipe was used straight from here, however we halved the quantities.


Plain Scones
(by Mary Berry)


Ingredients
350g Self raising flour
85g unsalted butter
3 tbsps caster sugar
200ml milk
1/4 tsp salt
1tsp baking powder
beaten egg to glaze


Method
1. Preheat the oven to 200C. In a bowl mix together the flour, baking powder and salt.
2. Add the butter and using your finger tips rub it in till the consistency of the butter and flour mix is like bread crumbs. 
3. Stir in the sugar. Or do as I did and add the sugar with the flour before the butter, it didn't seem to hurt the mixture!
4. Gradually add the milk to mixture, mixing it till it just comes together. DONT over work it. The mixture will be quite wet but this is ok.
5. Lightly dust a work surface and roll or pat out the dough to about 5cm thick, this will give nice high scone. Using a cutter (or a cup as I didn't have a cutter) cut the scones and put them on a greased tray. Lightly wash with the beaten egg and bake for 10-12 minutes or until nice and golden.
6. Serve with copious amounts of cream and jam.

Banana Cake

Bananas are a conundrum to me.
When fresh they look so inviting and tropical, but then as soon as you bite into them they are mushy and slimy - I imagine its what it feels like to eat a slug...
Whether you agree with me or not, I somehow cant resist them when they are in cake form. I love banana cake, its the perfect accompaniment to a hot drink and every time I have a Pret banana cake I feel a little bit happier.

This recipe is from our classic Goodhousekeeping book, its a really simple recipe that I don't think you can really go wrong with.
I have fiddled with it a bit replacing the butter milk with normal milk with a dash of white wine vinegar in and added 2 more bananas to make it more fruity, but also didn't have bicarbonate of soda so left this out and it didn't seem to make a difference because of the acid in the vinegar.

Banana Cake
(adapted from The Goodhouse Keeping Cook Book)

Ingredients
100g unsalted butter, softened
275g caster sugar
350g self raising flour
1 tspn baking powder
5 bananas, ripe
75ml butter milk *
2 eggs
100ml double cream
100g cream cheese
100g icing sugar, plus extra to decorate

* If you dont have butter milk like I often dont, you can make it by adding a dash of white wine vinegar or lemon juice to the milk allowing it to stand for a while before use so it can curdle.

Method
1. Pre heat the oven to 180C and grease 2 x 20cm baking tins, or 1 loaf tin.
2. In a bowl cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Add the eggs one by one, mixing well between each addition.
4. Sift the flour and baking powder into the wet ingredients, combining well. It will be quite stiff by now but don't be tempted to add anymore wet ingredients.
5. Mash the bananas and add to the butter milk. Add the wet ingredients to the batter stirring well. It will loosen to batter up a lot.
6. Split the batter between the 2 baking tins and cook for 30 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
7. Whilst the cakes cool you can make the filling. Whip the double cream and icing sugar together in a bowl until medium to stiff peaks form. Add the cream cheese and mix well.
8. Fill the 2 cakes with the icing and dust with icing sugar. I made the pattern by using some string on top of the cake, then dusted ontop of it to make a swirly pattern.