Why I Only Make 4 Scones

Do you ever make a batch of scones for just the two of you and the next morning, the leftovers are like dry crumbly rocks? Well, I've got your solution. Hi, I'm Gemma Stafford, a professional chef from Ireland and today I'm going to show you how to make a small batch of scones in your air fryer. Just four of them buttery golden and on the table in no time. No leftovers, no oven and no regrets. So a smaller dough is even easier to work with. So here I have some self raising flour. Now if you can't buy self raising flour in your country, I do have a recipe of how you can make it at home online. And it's just plain flour and baking powder. In Ireland, we use self raising flour a lot. And that's what we use commonly in our scones. To this, I'm going to add in a little bit of granulated sugar, break that up in there, and then a little smidge extra baking powder, just for extra lift. And it's going to mix those ingredients together, make sure that there's no lumps and everything is mixed evenly. In America, and I found this out the hard way. Self raising flour actually contains salt in Europe, it doesn't. That's why there's no salt in these scones. If you want to add in a pinch if you're outside of the US then feel free to do that. But I also use salted butter. Now speaking of butter, let's move on to the main ingredient when it comes to scones butter. I love European style butter, more fat, less water, more flavor, grass fed, just really delicious, really cold, cold from the fridge or even frozen. I like to use frozen sometimes. I remember doing home economics in school and then also reading like old fashioned Irish cookbooks. And they always said, like, have all of your ingredients really cold, like when you're making pastry or biscuits or scones. And I always wondered like, was it really necessary? But it really is, even though it can make the butter a bit tougher to work with. Get in there with your hands and just rub it in with your fingers. This is the easiest way to do it. The same method is used for biscuits and pastry making. Just get the butter. I'm gonna do it slow motion. Okay, you ready? Joey, watch this between your fingers just like that. Press the lumps of butter down even though it is cold. Give them a spread. And what we're looking for is coarse breadcrumbs. So big lumps, small lumps, totally okay. The one thing you don't ever want to do when making a recipe like this that's high in fat is overwork the butter and get it soft. Because what can happen then is that your dough will be greasy. So if you look at that, just after a few seconds, there's some small lumps in there. And there's also some big lumps. And that's totally fine. That's what we're going for. So there you go, it really doesn't take long doing it by hand. You can also use a pastry blender. So the reason you want the butter really cold and to stay cold is because once it goes into the air fryer and hits that hot heat, the butter will create steam and that steam will create layers. And that's what we want in our scone. So I'm just going to make plain scones. But the great thing about a scone recipe is that it's very versatile. So at this point with the dry ingredients, if you wanted to add in little currants, chocolate chips, maybe some orange zest, whatever flavor you like, maybe some chopped up frozen blueberries, add it in at this point into the dry ingredients. now we're going to add in our wet ingredients. So this little mixture doesn't even need an egg, we're actually going to use whole milk to make a combine. Sometimes in America, you'll see recipes for all cream scones. So if you have the luxury of adding just cream into your scone mix, then go for it will make them really rich. That extra fat is extra flavor be very delicious, but whole milk totally fine. And then just combine it together. I I like to use a fork. The thing about a scone dough is that you want to be loose with it. There is no kneading involved. I do not want to hear the words kneading when it comes to scones. Kneading is for bread. It's for pasta doughs. It is not for pastry. It is not for scones. The reason I also like to use a fork is it means that your hands aren't involved in there. Mixing it together. There we go. Lovely. So it's almost come together. Lastly, Lastly, I'm going to put my hand in there, bring it together and then turn it out onto my surface. When you're bringing your dough together and it feels a bit dry, don't freak out and then toss in some more. Use your hands to bring it together just like that. See the way it seems a little bit dry. It's actually not. It's the perfect consistency. The drier your dough, the better it actually is, because what we call this is being short, which means it'll be flakier. It'll kind of fall apart once baked. This is way better than having a dough that is too wet. it. This is perfect. Now, there we go. That is our dough. I'm gonna put a little bit of flour so it's easy. I'm gonna pat it down on my counter and I'm just gonna push my dough together to get my disc. Lovely. Look at that lovely little disc. What you can do from here to make it even easier is just get a knife and cut your scones into a few wedges. That's totally fine. In Ireland, we always have them cut out and round. So that's what I'm going to do. So the thickness of your dough you want it to around three quarters to one inch thick. You want a nice thick scone. One of my pet peeves being an Irish person is a little skinny scone so I want to make sure they're really nice and thick just like at home. For my cutter I use a two and a half inches and that yields me four scones. You can use what you have available or how many scones you want. So here's the baker's secret, cutting a scone, put your cutter on top, straight down, and then up again. The one thing you don't want to do when cutting scones is to put it down and twist it. We have a kind of layers built from making our dough with all of the butter. So you don't want to disturb those layers. We don't want any waste so you can kind of combine your dough again and get that last scone. So that's it. Look at that beautiful, lovely and thick. You can almost see the layers even before it's baked. Fantastic. Now air fryer for my air fryer because I'm all about convenience. I use these wrappers you can use whatever fits in your air fryer. and I'm going to place them in I have kind of you know, a medium size air fryer, it's not that big. So this recipe is actually perfect for a small batch of scones. Because I have a six year old I use my air fryer morning, noon and night I use it to roast vegetables. I use it to cook a pound of salmon. I've even roasted a two pound chicken in there. Also chicken nuggets, some leftovers late at night, I will put in one ball of cookie dough. And be my dessert before going to bed. But these small batch recipes like these scones are perfect, especially for a small family of three like the way we are. So before they go into the air fryer, I'm just going to egg wash the top. When you make this dough, if you only want to bake off one, then pop the others into the freezer and then you can bake them off whenever you want them. For me, I want all four, so follow me over to the air fryer and let's bake them off. So just a note on the air fryer, everybody's is different, you know yours best. I have a Philips one here, like I said, it's kind of small, it's really powerful. So the thing with my air fryer is you don't need to preheat it, which makes it even faster. I bake them at 325 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 160 degrees, 65 degrees Celsius. And then I bake them for around 15 to 18 minutes. What I like to do is just check them halfway through and make sure that they're on the right track and then start. So I'm excited to come back in a few minutes and have a small batch of freshly baked scones. So I'm going to take this opportunity while they're in the air fryer to answer some bold baking hotline questions. So here's a really good question, can I make these ahead and freeze them? When it comes to something like a scone, absolutely, it is no problem being frozen. You can freeze for up to eight weeks, sometimes a little bit longer. And then when you go to use them, just take them out, leave them at room temperature for like an hour, defrost, egg wash into the air fryer. The beauty about batch making them is that you can just take as many as you want, which is really lovely. I have a six year old, so for the morning we put it in one into the air fryer, good to go. Can I bake these scones in a regular oven? Yes, you absolutely can. 400 degrees Fahrenheit for around 20 minutes or so until they're a lovely golden brown. If you are looking for bigger batches of scones, then go to biggerbolderbaking.com. I've got lots of different scone recipes there. The reason that I'm making this video is because our small batch recipes were so successful with the audience. small batch cinnamon rolls and it is just one of the most popular recipes on my website right now including a small batch loaf of white bread which we have all the time here in my house small batch carrot cake so definitely go check those out after. Now for the moment of truth let's check on our scones. These look gorgeous well risen and a beautiful golden brown on top and in no time at all. As an Irish person I have made my fair share of scones and these are exactly what I was hoping for. Can you see all those beautiful layers? That was our cold butter doing its job. Once your scones are cooled, they are ready to be enjoyed. Beautiful golden brown on top because of the egg wash. And they rose up nice and straight because we cut them straight down. There's a few tricks to making and baking the perfect scone and now you know them. I don't have scones often but when I do, I go all out with some jam and whipped cream on top. In Ireland we have a saying, you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. So if you're going to do it, do it right. And now that you know how to make a small batch of scones, you can enjoy it too. Now that is an Irish scone experience. Really buttery, crispy on the outside, you can probably hear it on my microphone, soft in the middle, jam, cream, the whole shebang. And the best thing is now you can make them in a small batch, no oven needed, straight in the air fryer. It does not get more simple than that. Thank you so much for watching. If you'd like more small batch recipes just like this one, including mug cakes and mug meals, carrot cake, bread, get comfy. I've got lots more for you to check out. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you back here again next week for more Bigger Bolder Baking.