I was asked what actually makes a good scone. Is it the recipe, the ingredients, the technique? It is not a secret. Freshness comes first. We make them every day, and everything else is a distant second.
The recipe matters, and I have carried mine unchanged since it sold out of a van at Yorkshire festivals. But the same recipe baked on Monday and eaten on Thursday is not a good scone. Baked this morning, it is.
Baked every morning
Every day, not most days. Scones do not keep. A cake will sit happily for a few days and be none the worse, which is why not everything in the cabinet goes in the oven every morning. A scone is not like that, so every one that reaches the counter went in the oven that morning.
It also means a flavour can change overnight, because each morning starts a fresh batch.
The rise, and leaving the dough alone
After freshness, two things. A good scone needs a decent rise on it. And the dough should not be overworked, which is where most of them go wrong.
You can work a scone dough harder and get a neater, more uniform shape out of it, and some places do. I would rather have it soft and a bit crumbly and baked that morning than perfectly round.
What lands on the plate
A cream tea here is one of two things. The sweet one is a warmed sweet scone, tea-soaked sultana as I write this, with Fruity Kitchen's handmade strawberry jam, clotted cream, and your choice of English breakfast tea or a regular americano. The savoury one is a warmed cheese scone with butter, Fruity Kitchen's red onion relish and Longley Farm soft cheese, with the same choice of drink.
The cheese scone is on every single day of the year and outsells every other scone we make, by a distance.
The cheese one. On every day, all year, and not going anywhere.
The flavours turn with the seasons
Raspberry is the sweet scone at the moment and has been all summer, which is its season.
Then it turns over for autumn. I am looking at bringing apple and cinnamon back, which has its season from September into November, and I am also thinking about an Earl Grey and sultana, which we have never done before. Neither is decided yet.
I keep a fair collection of recipes and pull from it as the year goes round, so there are others in it beyond the ones the counter has seen this year. The brown sugar one in the photograph below is one of those.
Rhubarb from the spring rotation, and the brown sugar ones behind.
We have had a lot of people in from further afield this summer, more Canadian and American accents at the counter than usual, and plenty of them are trying the scones and liking them. A scone is a very English thing and a very Yorkshire thing, and if you have travelled a long way to be in a market town in North Yorkshire, that is quite reasonably what you have come for.
Who makes what
The jam and the relish are Fruity Kitchen's, handmade. The lemon curd is ours. The scones are baked here in the morning, and that is the part that matters.
If you want the longer version of the how, including what yesterday's scones become, that is in how we make our scones.
Where to get one
We are at 87 Market Place, on the square. The full menu has both cream teas on it, sweet and savoury, and neither needs booking. Walk in.
If you want the whole stand instead, with sandwiches and cakes and as much tea as you like, that is afternoon tea and that one does need booking.
