I served these recently at a cooking class I taught, as a nice way to start off, and received lots of compliments. With my ingredients assembled, I can have the scone mix made in under three minutes. Not a bad recipe to include in your repertoire, then!.
| 2 cups plain flour and 4 tsp baking powder, or 2 cups self-raising flour ½ tsp salt 2 dessert spoons sugar ¾ cup soya milk mixed with slightly under ¼ cup lightly flavoured oil (don’t quite allow the mix of milk and oil to come up to the one-cup line) roughly ½ cup chopped dates |
-Sift dry ingredients then whisk together to mix.
-Add chopped dates (use a pair of kitchen scissors to cut them up. It is much faster this way). Mix the dates in, again using the whisk (the whisking adds lightness to the scones).
-Stir first then add the milk and oil mixture (Vitasoy is creamy enough to use half and half with water).
-Mix until the ingredients are just combined—over mixing them will make the scones tough. After a little bit of stirring, I pick up the slightly sticky dough (add a little more flour if it is too sticky) and gently turn it in on itself a few times to finish the combining and tidy up all the bits.
-Place dough on a floured baking tray and gently pat down until it is about 1.5 centimetres thick. Cut into scones and bake in a hot oven (approx 200ºC) for around 12 minutes (or until they are turning a light golden brown).
-Lay a clean tea towel on a cooling wrack, on which you place your scones to cool, then fold tea towel over to cover.