Baking · Curd and Jam · Scones

Classic British Scones

Classic British scone recipe. Buttery in flavour, with a soft and fluffy texture. Top generously with jam of your choice, and clotted cream for the very best scone experience. 

This is a recipe update from April 2016. The recipe and photographs updated in April 2024.

I really love eating scones, and lately I’ve been enjoying baking scones too. I love a freshly baked scone, still slightly warm from the oven, spread with butter and jam, or topped with clotted cream and jam.

Scones originate right here in the United Kingdom. We Brits are proud of this bake that’s popular all over the world, with many countries having their own variations.

In the UK, we traditionally make sultana/plain scones and cheese scones.

I’m revisiting an older blog recipe; the original recipe contained vanilla, but with this one we’ve left it out, and actually, it tastes more traditional and even nicer without any vanilla extract. If you love vanilla, then you can always add a teaspoon to this scone mix.

Classic British Scones are left plain or have sultanas added. I enjoy both plain and sultana scones, but as one of the taste testers I’m making these for prefers plain scones, I’m therefore baking mine without sultanas today. If you want to include sultanas, add roughly a couple of small handfuls.

These scones are super simple to mix up; they have just a few more ingredients compared to my Lemonade Scones (3 Ingredient Recipe), but they’re incredibly tasty, with more of a buttery flavour and texture than the 3-Ingredient Recipe.

The mix makes around a dozen scones; how many you manage to make depends on the size of your cutter. I went for a 5cm fluted cutter; this made the perfect-sized scones, leaving us all longing for more.

Once the scones are risen and lightly golden, leave them to cool before serving. Serving is when you really bring your batch of scones to life. I highly recommend some strawberry jam and Cornish clotted cream. There’s no better taste experience than this spread atop a homemade scone!

I’m holidaying in Cornwall this year, so I’m excited for a cream tea or two, clotted cream ice cream, and other delicious Cornish foods. I can’t wait to devour freshly baked scones filled with masses of clotted cream and the sweetest jam! The countdown is on!

But in the meantime, I’ll quite happily take these!

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Classic British Scones

Classic British scone recipe. Buttery in flavour, with a soft and fluffy texture. Top generously with jam of your choice, and clotted cream for the very best scone experience.
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Total Time 30 minutes
Servings 12
Author What Jessica Baked Next

Ingredients

  • 350 g self-raising flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 85 g butter (salted or unsalted) cold and cut into cubes
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • Generous pinch of salt
  • 175 ml milk you might need to add more

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 220°C / 200°C Fan / 425°F / Gas Mark 7. Line a large baking tray with parchment paper and set aside.
  • In a large mixing bowl, add the flour, baking powder, and butter. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the dry ingredients until you have a fine breadcrumb consistency.
  • Now mix through the sugar, along with a generous pinch of salt. Slowly add the milk, continuing to mix until a soft dough (that's holds together well) comes together. You might need to add more milk to bring the scone dough together.
  • Lightly flour a work surface, press the scone dough out to approx. 4cm in thickness. Using a 5cm cutter (I went for a fluted cutter), gently stamp out 12 pieces from the dough - you will need to reshape and re-roll.
  • Brush the tops of the scones with a little extra milk, then bake for 12-15 minutes, or until risen, and lightly golden on top. Leave to cool on the baking tray for about 15 minutes, then serve with butter, jam, and cream of your choice.
  • The scones will keep for up to 2 days, stored in an airtight container/covered plate at room temperature. They're at their best on the day of baking.

More British recipes to bake next!

Coffee and Walnut Cake

Eton Mess Cake

Scottish Shortbread

 

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Baking

Lemonade Scones (3 Ingredient Recipe)

Once you’ve baked these 3 ingredient lemonade scones you’ll never go back to baking ordinary scones ever again! This recipe produces super light and fluffy scones without all the fuss and hassle. Top with cream and jam to make your own classic British cream tea. 

Scones are a traditional British tea time treat, you’ll find them in bakeries, supermarkets, farm shops and tea rooms all over the country. As you might know already, I’m trained chef. I’ve worked in a lot of different catering environments since graduating and one of my first jobs out of culinary school was working as a baker/chef at a tea room in my hometown.

Throughout the day I was baking lots of treats for the customers visiting the tearoom. We’re talking delicious cakes, the gooiest chocolate fudge brownies, savoury tartlets, sausage rolls and homemade gluten-free scones.

If you ever visit the UK then a trip to a British tearoom is essential during your time here. In Britain there’s debates around scones and cream teas – if you didn’t know already, the UK has several different accents and dialects and all over the country we pronounce our words differently to one another. Do you pronounce scone to rhyme with ‘cone’ or ‘gone’? I’m from down south (Eastern England), so I pronounce mine to rhyme with ‘cone’.

Also, what goes first the cream or the jam? In Cornwall it’s the jam first and cream on top and the other way around in Devon. I don’t really mind whether the cream or the jam goes first, all I know is that I love scones and don’t want to waste any time from devouring them!

The ingredients used in this scone recipe I’m sharing today make this recipe totally different to the majority of sweet scone recipes which typically include butter, sugar, flour and buttermilk/milk or eggs to bind it into a dough. The process usually involves rubbing the butter into the dry ingredients, however with this recipe minimal effort is required as you simply mix all the ingredients together until a dough forms.

The butter is replaced with double cream and the sugar is replaced with full sugar lemonade. Just be sure to use full sugar lemonade, I say this because we’re not adding any sugar to the scone dough, so all the sweetness will come from the sugar in the lemonade. I used a supermarket own brand lemonade and that worked wonderfully.

Tasting these scones transported me back to short breaks I’ve been on in the UK and eating scones in beautiful British destinations including lovely Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswolds. I’ve enjoyed a lot of afternoon teas, some with family and friends and most recently I attended a baby shower afternoon tea for my cousin. We enjoyed some of the most delicious scones there – this is my favourite part of an afternoon tea selection and I could definitely eat scones with cream and jam all day long!

So there’s a few points to take into account when making scones. The most important thing to remember is to handle the dough as little as possible. Avoid over mixing the scone dough otherwise your scones will be dense and tough. Also, scones aren’t meant to look picture perfect – they’re supposed to be odd shapes and not uniform in appearance, this is all part of their charm!

From the photograph above I wanted to slice a scone open and show you just how fluffy these scones are. I found this recipe in the food section of a magazine I read every month and thought it looked interesting enough to bake. I was dubious of how well this recipe would go, but still I decided to go ahead and bake the scones just to see. We tasted one before I decided to quickly set up all my food photography props and grabbed my camera to take some snaps to share with you!

What a treat to bake your mum this upcoming Mother’s Day in less than a weeks time. Serve your freshly baked scones with pots of clotted/whipped cream and curd or jam. My sister and I are preparing a little afternoon spread for our mum to celebrate and we’ll be baking a batch of these scones and we can’t decide between baking this yummy Carrot Cake Traybake, Carrot Cupcakes or Pumpkin Cake (all three are our mum’s favourites) – which cake would you pick?

(Makes 10-12)

Ingredients:

400g self-raising flour, sifted

175ml double cream

175ml full sugar lemonade

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 220°C / 200°C Fan / 425°F / Gas Mark 7. Line 2 large baking trays with parchment paper and set aside.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, put the flour in first and then add the wet ingredients. Mix gently until a dough comes together. Tip the dough out on a lightly floured work surface and press out until it’s 2cm in thickness.
  3. Using a 6cm cutter gently cut out the scones. Dipping the cutter in flour will stop the scones from sticking and will avoid twisting the cutter,  as this will stop them from being uneven, cut  10-12 scones from the dough – you will need to carefully re-roll the  leftover dough.
  4. Evenly space the scones out on the baking trays and bake for 12-15 minutes until they’re risen and lightly golden in colour.
  5. Transport the scones to a wire rack and allow them to cool completely before serving. I highly recommend topping the scones the British way with lashings of cream and strawberry/raspberry jam.

Scones will keep stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days. They’re best eaten on the day of baking.

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