Scones are considered one of the easiest things to bake, as you only need a few ingredients and everything can be mixed together in one bowl. But as with everything in baking, it’s never that simple and it’s oh so easy to get caught out by common pitfalls like overmixing which completely ruins the whole thing.
A key process in scone making is combining the flour with the butter. While this can be done using a mixer, the recommended method is to do it by hand. This not only gives you better control over the mixing, but it helps ensure the butter is evenly distributed in the flour to create that desired soft texture. Rubbing butter into flour is both time consuming and hard work, but this step can be bypassed entirely with a much simpler method instead. According to food experts, if you ditch butter in your recipe in favour of cream and lemonade instead you can mimic the light and fluffy texture of scones without having to go through any of the hassle of rubbing.
To save time and your arm muscles, cream can take the place of butter as it is much easier to combine with flour and it makes scones lovely and soft.
The flavour from cream also contributes a richness to scones and makes the overall texture more moist, while also giving them a nice brown crust.
As for the lemonade, this is used to create that fluffy lightness. The carbonation in lemonade forms bubbles which become trapped in the dough and as these expand during baking, it makes the scone rise and creates pockets of air for a much lighter tasting bake.
Georgia Mahood, food expert at Taste.com.au, explains: “The thought of rubbing flour into cold butter, which results in butter under the nails and flour all over the kitchen, is enough to make me look up ‘scones’ on Uber Eats and pray I can get my scone fix.
“But before you pick up your phone, there is an easier and mess-free way to make fresh scones… and it all starts with a bottle of lemonade. A cheap bottle of the sweet, carbonated stuff literally solves all the dread that comes with traditional scone-making.
“As cold butter is rubbed into flour, the butter breaks down into tiny bits of butter coated in flour. When baking, these bits of butter melt, creating air pockets in the scone that result in the light and tender texture we’re all after in a scone. But lucky for us, it’s easy to mimic this texture with the use of cream and lemonade – no rubbing required.”
She adds: “The carbonation in lemonade helps to aerate the dough to create light and fluffy scones that rise evenly.
“In a traditional scone, butter provides the scone with fat, which blocks gluten development and results in tender and flaky scones. But because butter is too much faff, we’ve swapped it to cream, which essentially does the exact same thing as the butter, but there’s no need to get your hands dirty – just stir the cream into the flour!”