Before there was a cafe there was a van, and before there was a van there were scones. The recipe I bake at 87 Market Place is the one Henrietta sold at Yorkshire festivals in 2018, and it has not changed since.
In at half past seven
The scones go in at half past seven, which is well before the door opens. A scone is at its best within a few hours of coming out of the oven, so the day starts with the oven rather than fitting it in later.
The scones get made every day. Not everything does. A cake might be good for a few days and there is no sense baking another one just to say I did, but a scone is a different thing and it does not keep in the same way. So they go in every morning, and that is the part that matters.
What yesterday's scones become
They get rebaked into a sconotti, which is a biscuit, and it goes out alongside a drink or with a bowl of soup.
It started as a way of using up the last of the morning's baking and it is now something people come in and ask for by name, which was not the plan.
What goes in
The recipe stays in the kitchen, but the principle is not a secret: cold butter rubbed in by hand, a light touch, and stop before you think you should. Overworked dough is the single most common reason a scone comes out heavy, and it happens in the last thirty seconds of mixing.
The cheese scone is the one that sells more than any other, and toasted with marmite butter is how I would have it. That one is on the light bites list rather than with the cream teas.
Through the year
Some scones stay on all year and some come and go with the season, changing three or four times.
The cheese one never moves. Rhubarb turns up in spring and runs to about June. Raspberry is the summer one, and August is its month. Apple and cinnamon arrive with the autumn and peak in October. The festive one runs from November into January.
Hot cross scones come in around February and sell through to April, and yes, people do start asking in February. They get them.
The cream tea
A sweet cream tea is a warmed sweet scone, tea-soaked sultana this season, with The Fruity Kitchen's handmade strawberry jam, clotted cream, and either English breakfast tea or an americano.
Ask for the savoury version and you get a warmed cheese scone with butter, Fruity Kitchen's red onion relish and Longley Farm soft cheese, which is better than it sounds.
The jam and the relish are Fruity Kitchen's, handmade. The lemon curd is ours.
If you want a whole stand rather than a single scone, that is afternoon tea, and it needs booking.
The one rule
Jam first, then cream.
I know. We are in Yorkshire, not Cornwall, and I am not going to have that argument across a counter. Both pots come to the table and you can do as you like.
If you are baking them at home
Two things, both learned the hard way on a festival field.
Weigh the butter and keep it in the fridge until the second you need it. Warm butter melts into the flour instead of staying in pieces, and those pieces are what makes the layers.
And do not twist the cutter. Push it straight down and lift it straight up. Twisting seals the edge, and a sealed edge cannot rise, which is why yours come out squat while the ones in the cabinet do not.
Rosa
