Ina Garten-Inspired Scones

Compiled by Igor Kukolj, Editor. Nobody here has cooked this — how these are made.

There is a habit almost everyone has when cutting scones, and it costs about a centimetre of height.

Twisting the cutter smears and seals the cut edge. The layers you spent the last ten minutes keeping separate are pressed shut around the whole circumference, and the scone cannot climb — it rises in the middle, leans, or comes out squat with a rounded shoulder. Press the cutter straight down through the dough and lift it straight up. No turn.

Dip the cutter in flour between scones if it sticks. That is the only reason anyone started twisting.

Grate the butter from frozen

Scones rise on the same principle as puff pastry: pieces of solid butter turn to steam and force the dough apart. Rubbing warm butter in with your fingers melts it into the flour and you lose the effect. Freeze the block, grate it on the coarse side of a box grater, and toss the shreds through the flour with a knife.

Handle it as little as possible, and pat rather than roll

A rolling pin compresses the layers you are trying to preserve. Pat the dough out to about 2.5 cm with your hands, fold it over on itself twice — this makes the sheets that pull apart when you break the scone open — then pat it out again and cut.

Put them close together on the tray

Scones spaced two centimetres apart support each other as they rise and climb higher than scones baking alone. It is the same reason a batch of bread rolls baked touching comes out taller. Not so close that they fuse — close enough that the sides stay soft.

Storing

They are a same-day thing, and best within two hours. Frozen raw, cut and on a tray, they bake straight from the freezer with an extra four minutes and are better than any day-old scone.