PUNCHY CHEESY SCONES

Scones are usually served with jam and cream. These ones want a chilli jam or a red onion marmalade and some cream cheese. It's a savoury dream. They're crumbly and delicious and the cayenne gives them not quite a kick, but a little slap of heat. I've been making these since I was about 9 and it's probably the first thing I ever baked actually. Cheese nostalgia.

Half an Hour

Ingredients

(To Make 16-20 Scones)

300g Self Raising Flour
100g Chilled Butter
A lot of Grated Mature Cheddar (150g+)
A Pinch of Salt
Crack of Black Pepper
Teaspoon Smoked Paprika
Teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
100ml Milk
Teaspoon of Baking Powder

Ingredients

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 180ºC. Sieve your flour into a bowl and add your baking powder, salt, pepper, paprika and cayenne. You need cold butter from the fridge and should cut it into little cubes. Pop your butter in with the flour. I use my fingers to make this all into a sort of breadcrumb consistency, however if you want a fluffier, more risen scone you must use a metal fork. You can then mix in most of your cheese but save a bit for topping the scones.
Create a well in your mixture once your butter and cheese is mixed in, it might look a bit shaggy and weird but this is fine. Pour in a bit of milk and mix that in. Keep going until you have a relatively smooth dough. Not too smooth though, a bit of shagginess is ok as we have to roll it out on some more self raising flour. Save a little milk for brushing on the top of le scones.
Lightly flour a surface and roll out your dough to about 2cm thick. Use a circular cutter to cut circular scones and pop them onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. You should be able to get about 8-10 on each tray. Top with a little bit of milk and a sprinkling of extra cheddar. Bake them for about 20 minutes or until the top is a little browned.
Tuck in. Sour cream might be nice spread on these and maybe a little chilli sauce. Get creative. Think sweet scones and ways of substituting stuff. Fun, fun fun.