Christmas Scones - THE BEST FOOD RECIPE

Pre-heat the oven to 220ºC/200ºC fan.

Lightly grease a baking sheet with butter (or alternatively, I use a bake-o-glide sheet and greasing isn’t necessary).

Put the self-raising flour (250g) into a large bowl. Cut the butter (50g) into cubes and add it to the flour.

Gently rub the butter into the flour until it is the consistency of breadcrumbs.

Cut the marzipan (50g) into small cubes.

Add
the caster sugar (30g), baking powder (½ tsp), salt (¼ tsp), marzipan,
mincemeat (100g) to the flour and butter. Give it a quick stir to ensure
that all of the ingredients are evenly distributed.

Make
a well in the centre and add the full-fat milk (85ml) and brandy
(50ml). I like to keep a tablespoon or two of milk back to add at the
end to help collect up any stray bits of flour.

With
as little action as possible, mix the milk and brandy into the dry
ingredients using your hands until the mixture has come together. If
there’s any flour left at the bottom then add a touch more milk to help
collect it up.

Sprinkle
a dusting of flour onto your work surface. Place the dough onto the
floured surface and pat it flat, about 1½ inches thick (don’t use a
rolling pin).

Using
a round cutter (I used a 6cm diameter cutter to make 9 small scones),
press into the dough and carefully lift out the scone and place it onto
your baking sheet. Cut as many scones as you can, ball up the remaining
dough, pat flat and repeat cutting out more scones until all of your
dough has been used.

Brush a little milk onto the top of each scone.

Place
into the oven and cook for 12-15 minutes until they are cooked (I like
to tap on the bottom to see if they sound hollow, as you would do with
bread).

Once cooked, remove them from the oven and place onto a wire rack to cool (or eat them while they’re still warm!).