Cream, lemonade, or fingertips - what's the trick?
"When you press the scone cutter down, make sure that when you pull it up, you do it straight up - no twisting or turning. This prevents the scone from becoming a leaning tower of Pisa.”
Deftly, a judge at the Sydney Royal Easter Show identifies scones which breach this criterion, no homages to ill-fated Italian architecture here, they’re instantly removed with no more than a glance. Continuing to nimbly sift through the table of scones, the judge begins to pick them up, one by one, twisting the scones open like a jam jar lid.
“See, perfect. You should be able to break a scone in half with ease by twisting it just like this. You don’t use a knife to break a scone in half.”
She peers up at the crowd through her glasses, satisfaction in her eyes, a slight pause, you can tell she’s observing who in the crowd is taking notes. Not a seat to spare, enthusiasts are ever happy to stand, surge, and crowd around each other to catch such unusually disclosed tips.
The judge isn’t as old as you may think, her coiffured red hair and darting hands giving youthfulness and competency to her work. There’s a strict schedule to keep to, lamingtons are next. But what makes or breaks a scone? Is it the ingredients - do you use very cold butter, add lemonade, or substitute cream for milk? Or the method - pinch the butter into the flour with your fingertips, ensure the oven is extremely hot? What if it was neither, but simply, the implement you use to mix everything with.
What makes or breaks a scone is whether you use a bone-handled knife - and it has to be one from Sheffield. A city in the UK, Sheffield has been synonymous with knife making since the miller carried one in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales - “A Sheffeld thwitel baar he in his hose”. By the 1600s, Sheffield was a primary centre for cutlery production, before leading in silver plating technology, and then, famously, discovering and patenting stainless steel production between 1912 and 1924. In the homes of Australians throughout the 20th Century, the ‘butter knife’ or ‘bone-handled’ knife became ubiquitous. So popular it was, the handles were no longer made of bone or stag horn, but a new material - synthetic resin.
The benefit of the bone-handled knife, faux, or otherwise, is the flat, wide, top-bevelled blade. It provides vital surface area to course through the flour whilst refraining from overworking the mixture, as a wooden spoon or spatula might. Where scones come together or fall apart is in this mixing process. Worked too well and the scones will be dense and heavy, literal rock cakes. Mixed too lightly and inconsistencies will reveal themselves upon first chew. In lieu of the 2020 Sydney Royal Easter Show, which was cancelled for the first time since WWII, 92 year old CWA member Muriel Halsted shared the secrets to a quick and easy scone recipe. Her use of cream and lemonade aside, catch on to how she does it in the video below:
“With your knife, you mix that in...”
“...see, but you’re stirring with your knife, you’re not, sort of, doing it heavily with a spoon.”
For the competitive and amateur bakers alike, there is often no more treasured a possession than their bone-handled knife, a magical wand for baking, icing, and creating.
Video Source: ABC New England North West
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