Recipe taken from the “students’ vegetarian cookbook”
The recipe is just for plain scones, but I always prefer cheese ones so have adapted the recipe by adding cheese to it, though you could also add cherries, dried fruit or honey to the mixture before baking them. If you choose to add honey you should also add a little more flour to maintain the right consistency.
Ingredients
♥ 450g self-raising flour
♥ 30ml tablespoon baking powder
♥ 75g butter/margarine
♥ 300ml milk
Method
- Mix the flour and the baking powder together
- Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
- Gradually add the milk until the mixture forms a dough.
- Roll out on a floured surface to about 2.5cm thick.
- Cut into circles with a cookie cutter.
- Place on a greased baking tray and bake in a preheated oven at 220°c for about 7 minutes until well risen and golden brown.
This is a fairly simple recipe and they taste fantastic, especially once they have just come out the oven with a bit of butter on them as it starts to melt the butter into them, after all, you have to check they are cooked properly. I have tried a few different scone recipes from various books my mum has (this is actually a rather old book of hers that I seem to have acquired, even though neither of us are actually vegetarians) and have found that these seem to work the best.
This recipe usually makes quite a lot of scones and I have found that they last about a week when in an airtight container, however as I am living alone right now and there is a limit as to how many I can physically eat in a week I have halved the ingredients, which will still produce a fair amount of scones though. The dough can be quite sticky but I find that adding extra flour works this out. The recipe never actually states how much cheese to use so I just use about 150g-300g (basically however much I can knead into it) of grated cheddar cheese, but any type of cheese should work. I knead the cheese in after I have formed the dough, not sure if this is when its supposed to be added but it seems to be working for me so far. Any size cutter is fine, I usually use a round one as most scones are round, but square ones work great too or any shape you like would also work out fine.
Once the scones are cut out and all the dough is used up I put them on a greased baking tray with greaseproof paper on it, this seems to stop them sticking to the tray as much and it also makes it easier to clean by just throwing the sheet of paper away, im all for making things easier. I usually have to bake them in 2 batches as I still only have 1 baking tray (I keep forgetting to get another one) and keep an eye on them while they are cooking as it is easy to leave them a tad too long and them to slightly burn on the bottom (has happened to me on a couple of occasions due to new cookers and just not timing it quite right). 
Once the first batch are cooked I checked them by cutting one in half to see if it’s cooked properly before putting the second batch in. As it has already been cooked though it always seems to make sense to pop some butter on it and let it melt slightly then eat it, which is a very effective way of thoroughly checking its cooked and tastes pretty damn awesome too, although this does mean that you have to do the same to one from the other batch just to check those as well, what a shame.
