Still testing those scones

Scones, family apple cake (which didn't photograph very well, though I'm hoping it will appear here at some stage), other assorted tea time goodies (the mustard was for the sandwiches; that is NOT an English teatime scone tradition)

I said a few weeks ago that I had found the definitive scone recipe. Then I thought I'd better check another one, just in case. Nope, Nigella still had it. Then Johanna suggested that I try her lemonade scones which I have to admit had attracted my attention already. She said that they were great - light, fluffy and inspired after someone brought them in to her work. What if they had something that Nigella just couldn't match (carbonation, for instance)? While Nigella swears by plain flour and lots of cream of tartar, Johanna's recipe uses lemonade as the raising agent. I've tried beer in bread - why not lemonade in a scone?


I made these for our Alice tea party which was a couple of weeks ago now, but I *think* I did it all exactly as the recipe stated. The only thing I wasn't quite sure about was whether my lemonade was cold enough. It had been in the fridge but only for a couple of hours. As Johanna herself said, these scones aren't quite as convenient to make as normal ones as they also use cream (which we don't have on standby, largely because The Scientist makes it his business to make sure it all gets used up straight away when we do have it). For that reason alone I wouldn't promote them to top of the list, but they were, again, very good. I quizzed our guests excessively but they were frankly too busy buttering, jamming and creaming to be terribly interested in finessing a review, and The Scientist, who is the only one who has tasted all of the scones, got confused about where the lemonade came in and assumed that we were back to Nigella. I don't think they quite hit the fluffiness of the Nigella ones, but they were definitely lovely and soft. I have to apologise for the photos - I had just got my new camera but not yet the new memory card, and so after using up all ten of my quota of pictures I was back to the Ecos' camera - which I never quite managed to work out properly. Not that I'm not grateful to them :)

My thanks to Neil for for crafting his scone so beautifully, and then waiting for ages while I tried to photograph it :)

I'm on scone duty again tomorrow for another event, and it will be back to the Nigellas for now. But I think there may still be room for further investigation. We had a lovely light scone while we were on holiday in the Lakes, for instance, which surprised us by being flavoured with blackberry and chocolate chips. Neither of us was a fan of the latter in a scone, but fresh seasonal fruit - now there's an idea.

Johanna's lemonade scones: recipe here