Delia Smith’s Plain Scones Recipe

These are Delia Smith’s scones, her Plain Scones made with self-raising flour, butter, a little sugar and milk, and the recipe makes about 8. You mix a soft dough by hand, cut out rounds, then bake them in a hot oven. The whole batch takes about 30 minutes, so they suit a last-minute afternoon tea.

The recipe comes from Delia’s Cakes (2014), and her website uses it too, with a video lesson in her online Cookery School. Plain simply means no added fruit. Delia wants them light and airy, with a crusty top for jam and clotted cream.

The same simple dough is the start of her fruit scones, buttermilk scones and cheese scones. So once you can make these, you can make the rest, and even her tiny cheese, onion and olive scones for parties, or a scone pizza for supper.

Delia Smith’s Scones

Recipe by Anne Morgan

0.0 from 0 votes

Course: Afternoon TeaCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy

Servings

8

servings

Prep time

15

minutes

Cooking time

15

minutes

Calories

160

kcal

Light, plain scones with a crusty top, ready in half an hour for a proper cream tea.

Ingredients

• For the scones:

• 40g spreadable butter

• 225g self-raising flour, sieved, plus a little extra

• 1½ level tablespoons golden caster sugar

• pinch of salt

• 110ml milk, plus a little more if needed

• To serve:

• butter

• jam

• clotted cream

Directions

• Oven: Heat the oven to 220°C, fan 200°C, gas mark 7. Line a baking sheet with a non-stick liner.
• Rub in: Rub the butter quickly into the sieved flour with your fingertips. Stir in the sugar, then the salt.
• Mix: Add the milk a little at a time, mixing with a knife. Flour your hands and knead it into a soft dough, adding a drop more milk if it feels dry.
• Roll: Put the dough on a floured board and roll it out lightly with a floured rolling pin, until it is about 3cm thick.
• Cut: Push a 5cm cutter straight down with one sharp tap, without twisting it. Cut as many rounds as you can, then knead the trimmings together and cut again.
• Bake: Set the scones on the baking sheet and dust each one with a little flour. Bake them near the top of the oven for 12 to 15 minutes, until risen and nicely browned.
• Serve: Cool them on a wire rack, and eat them as soon as you can handle them, with butter, jam and clotted cream.

Notes

• Eat them on the day you bake them. Her older cookery course warns that scones go stale very quickly, and it serves them slightly warm, still crisp outside and soft inside.

FAQs

Why didn’t my scones rise?

The dough was most likely rolled too thin. Delia says this is the question her readers ask her most often, and thin dough is the main cause.

Her 1992 cookery course says never less than 2cm, but Delia’s Cakes raises it to 3cm and says that thickness is the key. A twisted cutter is the other trap, because it gives the scones a strange shape.

Lopsided scones come from pressing harder on one side of the rolling pin, but she does not mind them, because they look home-made. In the same chapter she explains that scones grew out of the girdle cake, and only rose in the oven once raising agents came along.

Can I make scones with plain flour, buttermilk or yoghurt?

Yes. Delia says you can use plain flour with 1 level teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda and 2 level teaspoons of cream of tartar. Buttermilk or natural yoghurt can replace the milk too.

She finds her self-raising version just as good, and its ingredients are always to hand. If you want buttermilk but have none, her website suggests milk with a little lemon juice or vinegar stirred in.

Can I freeze scones?

Yes, but they are best eaten within hours of baking. Her website says to bake them first, then freeze them in sealed freezer bags as soon as they are cold, for up to 3 months.

Take them out of the freezer a couple of hours before you need them. Then lift them out of the bags and let them thaw in a lidded box lined with kitchen paper. Her older book is stricter and says to eat frozen scones within a month.

Why does her older recipe make 12 scones?

Her Complete Cookery Course (1992) rolls the dough thinner, to 2cm, and uses a 4 or 5cm cutter. So the same 225g of flour makes about 12, with 150ml of milk and butter or margarine at room temperature.

Neither version has an egg. Her Rich Fruit Scones, also in Delia’s Cakes, add a beaten egg with the dried fruit.