Scones should only ever be cooked in cast iron, because the combined heat of the oven and the pan create the most crunchy of sweet buttery crusts. Agatha’s recipe with its fluffy figgy interior, slathered with dollops of fresh vanilla cream and adorned with a gooey glob of sweet fig will have all your people declaring they are the best scones they ever tasted. I picked and preserved these figs last December and they have sat in my pantry all these months waiting to be honoured and devoured. It was most definitely worth the wait.
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 10 minutes
Makes: 10 scones
INGREDIENTS
2 c white flour
¼ c sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
½ tsp ground cardamom
½ tsp salt
115g cold butter, cut into small chunks
1 egg
½ c buttermilk
1 tbsp orange zest
1 c fresh or preserved figs, chopped into quarters
Extra flour for the table
METHOD
Heat oven to 225°C.
Combine the dry ingredients well then rub the butter in with your fingers
until the mix resembles bread crumbs.
Whisk together the egg, buttermilk and orange zest and lightly fold into the
buttery flour until just combined. Lastly add the fresh figs and mix very
gently, making sure you don’t break up all fig flesh.
The mixture will be quite sticky, so liberally flour the bench top and gently
form the dough into a rectangle about 2cms thick. Sprinkle extra flour on
top if your hands are sticking.
Lightly grease your Ironclad Grande Pan or Legacy Pans.
Using a sharp cookie cutter cut into 10 rounds and place all 10 in the
Grande Pan or 5 each in the Legacy. You’ll cut the first 6 out then gently
reform the dough to make the remaining 4.
Bake for 10 minutes.
Serve warm with whipped or clotted cream and extra figgy goodness on
top.
Mmmm. Agatha. These are scones worth writing about.
