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Gemma's Bigger Bolder Baking Traditional Irish Scones
Hi Bold Bakers! Today is a very special St. Patrick's Day collaboration with fellow Irish
YouTuber, Donal Skehan. Donal is a great chef and he makes beautiful homemade dishes. Here's
a little note from him.
(Donal) Hi Gemma! Donal here. A big welcome to Hoke.
My hometown just outside of Dublin. I hope that these scenes aren't making you feel too homesick.
I just want to say a big Thank You for taking part in my big St. Patrick's Day collaboration.
I cannot wait to see what you come up with. Over on my channel, I'm going to make the
most beautiful, warm and comforting Irish Apple Crumble. It's totally delicious and
served with whipped cream. It is a thing of true beauty.
Come over to my channel. Click Subscribe. Happy St. Patrick's Day and I'll see you soon.
I'm really looking forward to Donal's Apple Crumble and I'm going to show you how to make
the perfect traditional Irish scones. So let's get baking!
When people ask me what Ireland is like, I tell them about the beautiful green landscape,
the great people, and just about our overall culture in general. And a big part of our
culture is the food. It is simple, great ingredients. And a perfect example of this is that Irish people
love a good cup of tea and a freshly baked scone. It cannot be beat!
So we're going to start out in a large bowl. Add in your flour, sugar, salt and baking
powder, and then mix them together.
If you follow me on Instagram, you'll recognize this Mason Cash bowl. I absolutely love them.
It's what my mom used for baking when I was growing up. So I brought it from Ireland to
California because I like it so much.
To this we're going to add in our cold, cubed butter and we're going to rub it in with our
fingertips and get it nice and small. This is a little bit of a messy job but you don't need a
machine so it's really good.
Because we're making Irish scones, I'm using Irish butter. It's really good for baking
and it's nice and salty.
Just rub it through your fingers and the result we're trying to get is kind of like big and small
bread crumbs. The good thing about this method is the rougher the better, it doesn't all have
to be uniform. Ok, perfect. This is what we want. It was nice and fast. As you can see,
there are some big lumps of butter. There are some small lumps.
These are all going to melt differently and give you a beautiful, flaky scone.
If you're going to flavor your scones, you can add something in at this point. I'm going
to add in raisins but you can use blueberries, maybe chocolate and orange, any flavor you
like. But just do it before you add in your wet ingredients.
Now in a jug add in your milk, cream, and egg. And whisk all together. If you don't
have cream, you can use all milk but cream makes a really nice light scone.
Now add your wet into your dry ingredients.
My secret to perfect soft scones is very simple. Don't overmix your dough. You never want to
overmix flour. I know you hear me say it a lot but it's true. So you want to go in with
a nice big, open hand, move around your ingredients until they form a dough and then stop. As
you can see, my dough is starting to form a ball. Now I don't want to put in any more
liquid in here, I'm just going to bring it all together with my hand and scoop up those
dry bits. Any loose raisins, you're coming with me too. Now that was nice and fast to
bring this dough together.
Now we're going to flour our surface and cut out our scones. Pat out your dough with your
hands until it's around an inch thick. We want nice thick scones. Now use a cutter to
cut out your scones. Making dough is one of my most favorite things because you can always
tell with your fingers whether you're on the right track or not. Now place your scones on a lined
baking tray. This dough is looking really good. It's soft and easy to work with. With
the scraps you have left over from cutting out your scones, push it all together gently
form a new dough and keep on cutting until it's all gone.
Sometimes with the last little bit of dough, there's a little nobbly guy but he'll still
taste great so put him on there too.
Before our scones go in the oven, we're going to glaze the top. And I'm going to show you
a little trick that my mum showed me.
I think cracking a whole egg for glazing is a bit of a waste so what I do is with the
jug that I had the milk and the egg in, there's a little bit always left over in the bottom.
And I put my hand in there. I don't even use a pastry brush and then just glaze the top
of the scones. This will give them a lovely golden brown finish when they're done. At
this point you can actually freeze your scones, and then when you want to bake them take them
out, let them defrost for a few minutes, and then bake off lovely fresh scones.
These guys are ready for the oven. We're going to bake them off at 350 degrees F or 180 degrees
C until they're beautiful and golden brown.
If you like this recipe, then I have over 60 BIG & BOLD baking videos that I know you'll
love so if you haven't done so already, don't forget to subscribe to my channel.
Our timer has gone off so let's check on our scones.
Our scones are out of the oven and they look and smell amazing. They're beautiful and brown
all over and even on the bottom. This is exactly what we want. As you can see there are lovely
layers from rubbing in that butter. What you want from a good scone is to get a lovely
all over color like this. Now I'm going to show you how to make these little guys BIG & BOLD.
If you haven't been to Ireland, you might not be familiar with our cuisine. One thing
we do very well is we use really good quality ingredients to make beautiful, simple recipes.
I went to the famous Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork where Darina Allen taught us
that simplicity is best. She used the best quality for her amazing recipes and that's
what I try to do here on Bigger Bolder Baking.
That's why we're going to finish these scones off with butter, jam and freshly whipped cream
and we have something beautiful.
Freshly baked scones are one of life's little pleasures and when you make this recipe you'll
know what I mean.
If you're going to make scones, you might as well go all out and do it right. This is
really good. Now I'm going to have to make myself a cup of tea.
Don't forget to go over to Donal's Channel and check out his Apple Crumble and all of
his other videos.
Thank you so much for subscribing to my channel. Happy St. Patrick's Day! And I'll see you
back here again next Thursday for more Bigger Bolder Baking!