Scones, a success story!

For many years now, I wanted to re-visit the palatial deliciousness,gastronomical and the gorgeousness of the scones which was baked by Evelyn, our family friend while visiting Evelyn,Timothy and their two girls, Elizabeth and Elysha in Cameron Highlands some time ago. I still remember the delightfully good tasting scones for tea and it was really an exploding joy to palate of taste in my mouth. The butter and jam makes it all such a inter-twinning delight as you consume the scones. Never could get anything close to what she had done while scouting for it in stores and I had promised myself that someday , I am going to try out this good stuff and set the scones made by Evelyn as my gauging standard. I then decided last Friday that I am going to try to make some scones and I quickly went to shop for the ingredients. Like as always, I browsed the Net for some fine recipes and I decided to use the "River Cottage" recipe as I saw it twice on TV on how the baker together with one of the ladies baked some nice looking scones. As always, I tweaked the recipe a little bit and I just visualize every step of the baking process. I guess, I must confess that I pray a lot as I use these rough hand to bake the scones.

So, I woke up early at about 7.30am on Saturday morning and started preparation of the ingredients. As we had an appointment for a picnic, I was pretty confident that I could bake some scones but the taste will be another matter altogether. As always, I was prayerful and hoped that I would get the baking right and may the scones turn out good. So, I must confess that baking helped me to relax a lot. I can tell you this - I put my heart and soul as I do the baking. It was never to show off or any of that kind of arrogance. I was genuinely wanting to learn to bake and put out some nice fluffy scones on the tables while enjoying something near to that taste I used to taste before. The benchmark was indeed very high and I tell myself that I would have to try, at least to get the process right. So, I started mixing the ingredients - in went the self raising flour, the baking powder, the butter and the gentle process started.  Then came the the sugar, the salt, the vanilla essence and the milk. The mixing with the hands started and it was really a gentle process. The dough was then formed and with the use of a big piece of tiles, I placed the dough  on it and gently knead it. It was soft, sticky and smelled nice. I then started to cut out the scone pieces with a round cutter unto the soft dough. Placed them on the tray and brushed them nicely with milk. Then it is off into the oven for baking. 10 minutes into the baking time, the kitchen permeates the beautiful aroma of the scones in baking process. It was sweet smelling and one fine smell. Never mind if the scones looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa but the most important for me is that they turned out nice. That was my concern rather than the tilting piece. 

When the scones came out from the oven, They came out pretty okay. My heart was racing a lot as the scones came out for the oven. Afterall, I have to, at least, ensure that the scones are edible and not chipped some people's tooth or hard like roti kok! Anyway, as I cooled them off a bit after exiting the oven, I could see the golden brown delight looked good. I was happy and when it came to the tasting part, the scones passed the test. Yup! Errol & Jessica plus Josephine, together with Din & Abby plus the children were my human test subject this time on my creation and they took up the challenge admirably well. They gave me the thumbs up and I was really happy. As I took one and tried it, I must admit they tasted fine and good. Yunno, it was such a sense of achievement and a relaxing hobby. The texture was there. The taste was there while the    overall feel of the scones were there. What a joy it was to my heart that I am able to get the baking right. It was a beautiful feeling. 

So, the question is - Did my scones even come close to match Evelyn's scones? Well, I still feel that her scones were way  much better but mine did not do that badly though! YES, it doesn't matter. As long as I can popped it into my mouth and know that is a scone, I am more than happy. Just glad to be able to patiently carry out the baking process. Somehow, tea time would never be the same again, right?