Day 1141: After the Tea

Back in January I went to my first Afternoon Tea at The Grand Floridian, and I absolutely loved it. As usual, the food was amazing, and you can read all about that experience HERE, but one thing in particular just really stood out to me: the scones.

I've never been a huge fan of scones, despite the fact that several of my former roommates love the things. They just seemed like another type of bread, and since I generally eat muffins for my breakfast, scones just seemed dry. And then I had the scones at Afternoon Tea and my whole outlook on life changed.

Amidst attempts to make my life more organized, I began by meal planning, which enabled me to make all my food on the weekend so I didn't have to worry about it during the week. So far, it's worked out relatively well, and it's made me much less stressed about how I'm going to eat my next meal (it also means that I actually eat all of my meals...which I most certainly didn't do last semester). For breakfast, I've started making homemade dairy-free parfaits and muffins to last the whole week, but when I found a recipe for the scones from Afternoon Tea, I figured I'd give them a shot.

The recipe comes from AllEars.Net and is as follows:

To make 24 Scones

4 cups all-purpose flour
3 Tablespoons baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons margarine
2 Tablespoons shortening
3 eggs, beaten
1 1/4 cup milk
1 cup golden raisins

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Sift the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt into a large mixing bowl. Rub the margarine and shortening into the flour with your fingertips until a mixture resembles coarse meal. Combine the eggs and milk and stir them into the flour mixture, just until the dough comes together. Fold in the raisins.

Roll the dough out to about 1/2 inch thickness on a lightly-floured surface. With a 2-inch round cutter; stamp out 24 scones and transfer them to a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake the scones for 10-15 minutes or until they are light brown.

Serve at once with Devonshire cream or butter and jam.

For me, two things were extremely difficult with these scones. First, the fact that my kitchen at school is relatively small, with almost no counter space, and my cutting boards that would work to roll out the dough are hardly big enough to make these scones an easy task. Secondly, our oven is possessed, or so I believe. You never quite know how long it's going to take for something to cook, but more often than not it overcooks things, so that's better than undercooking I suppose. Either way, it made the timing difficult on the scones. They still turned out really nicely though, and I'd definitely make them again...if I'm willing to put in the effort it takes to make them.

Or you know, I could just go to Afternoon Tea instead.

Have a magical day!