Martin Philip's Ginger Scones Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

What is the best raising agent for scones and why? ›

A final crucial ingredient in scones is some sort of leavening agent such as baking powder. Be sure to sieve this into the mixture evenly for a better chance of an even rise. In the oven, these leavening agents will react and form carbon dioxide, a gas.

"Once you've shaped your scones, chill them before baking," Youngman says. "You can use that time to preheat the oven so the kitchen doesn't heat up while you make the dough. The final chill relaxes the gluten which yields a tender texture.

Baking soda reacts with acidic ingredients, creating lift when the acid is introduced. For example, when a cake recipe calls for baking soda, you'll typically find an acidic ingredient, such as buttermilk or lemon, in the list.

Butter must be COLD from the very start to when the dough enters the oven. The cold butter melts upon entering the oven and the water content in butter evaporates in steam. As the steam escapes, it bursts up and creates that beautiful tall, flaky, fluffy texture.

Our answer. Lily's Scones (from HOW TO BE A DOMESTIC GODDESS) have a combination of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) and cream of tartar as leavening agents.

Keeping scone dough as cold as possible prevents over-spreading. When scones over-spread in the oven, they lose the flaky, moist, and deliciously crumbly texture. In other words, they're ruined. But the easiest way to avoid disaster is to use cold ingredients like cold heavy cream, egg, and butter.

If you are using baking soda, you will want to use buttermilk, an acidic ingredient that will react with the leavener to help them rise. On the other hand, if you use cream or milk, you'll want to use baking powder because it combines the acid needed with baking soda all in one complete powder.

It is far better that the scone mixture is on the wet side, sticking to your fingers, as the scones will rise better. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and flatten it out with your hand, or use a rolling pin, to a thickness of 1-2 cm (1/2 – ¾ inch).

Use all-purpose flour for a higher rising scone that holds its shape nicely, both in and out of the oven. To make more delicate, lower-rising, cake-like scones, substitute cake flour for all-purpose flour. Reduce the liquid in the recipe by 1 to 2 tablespoons, using just enough to bring the dough together.

What happens if you don't put baking powder in scones? ›

If you used plain flour they might be a bit biscuity! They'll still taste good but might be thin. I accidentally used plain flour and just 1tsp of baking powder last week. Thin and more biscuity but still good with cream and jam!

Too much baking powder can cause the batter to be bitter tasting. It can also cause the batter to rise rapidly and then collapse. (i.e. The air bubbles in the batter grow too large and break causing the batter to fall.) Cakes will have a coarse, fragile crumb with a fallen center.

Recipes for scones sometimes provide a make-ahead option that involves refrigerating the dough overnight so it can simply be shaped and then popped into the oven the next day. But now we've found that resting the dough overnight has another benefit: It makes for more symmetrical and attractive pastries.

Why Are My Scones Flat? Expired leavening agents. Your baking powder and/or baking soda could be expired. Most scone and biscuit recipes call for quite a large amount of leavening, and if either are expired, your scones simply won't rise to beautiful heights.

The most likely reason I can think of is that you omitted the leavening, or what you used was flat. Another reason might be that your dough was too warm when you baked it, so it spread more while baking. Of course, scones are not yeast products, so they shouldn't rise as much as bread would.

A: Baking powder is a very important raising agent for this recipe since it leavens the whole recipe mixture instead of just flour. Therefore, with all other heavy ingredients involved, it's necessary to use a lot of baking powder to give the scones a decent rise. You can reduce it but your results will be denser.

Scones are a type of quick bread made with chemically-leavened dough. Baking powder is the preferred leavening agent, and they are usually enriched with eggs, milk, dairy fat and sugar.

The raising agent is clearly all-important, yet cookbook writers are divided over which gives the best results. I've always used baking soda, but I find recipes calling for baking powder, self-raising flour, cream of tartar – and a combination of all of the above.

Raising agents are powders that are added to baking mixtures which react chemically to release carbon dioxide. The bubbles of carbon dioxide add air to the mixture, which is then baked and the air bubbles become locked into the protein structure of the sponge creating the fluffy crumb we know and love.