Practical life: baking scones

Today has been wet and cold. Usually we have outdoor playgroup on a Monday morning, but lots of the group currently have poorly children and Frida woke up a lot last night, so I opted instead for a slow day of pottering and playing and baking. 

I hadn’t made scones with Frida before, and they are so easy that I figured even tired me couldn’t mess them up too much. I always use this BBC recipe for scones as I’ve found it very reliable. 

I prepared everything we needed first to make it easier for Frida to be involved.

She poured the flour into the mixing bowl then I added a pinch of salt – the only ingredient I didn’t really want her to handle. 

Frida then transferred the cubed butter from a bowl into the mixing bowl with a spoon. She took this very seriously and was very thorough. 

Then I demonstrated to Frida how to rub the butter into the flour, and encouraged her to have a good go. I had to help at the end to ensure it was all mixed in properly. 

Next Frida added the sugar and milk – I think she got a bit over excited and forgot to put the ramekin down before grabbing the milk. 

As an aside, you will notice that here Frida is using “proper” crockery – Denby bowls, glass ramekin and glass. We have always trusted Frida to use the same crockery as us and so far she has never broken anything! 

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She then mixed up the mixture, and I added some more flour (I never weigh anything so at this stage I often have to tweak quantities slightly – now Frida is getting older I must buy scales as I don’t want her to pick up sloppy cooking practices from me). 

I brought the mix together into a dough and Frida did some kneading. Last week at our Steiner playgroup Frida kneaded some bread dough to make rolls, so this was fresh in her memory. She enjoyed making fingerprints in the dough more than she enjoyed the kneading! 

We then used some dinosaur cutters to shape the scones. I thought Frida would love this part but she preferred to continue making finger prints (!) so gave up after a couple. I cut out the rest and laid them carefully on a baking sheet. 

Frida then mixed up the egg and used a clean brush to carefully paint the scones with egg wash. She had to do this very gently as otherwise the dough became squashed, so good fine motor practice. 

Finally – cleaning! This was quite a messy activity with flour and bits of dough everywhere so it required a thorough clean up. 

The scones tasted amazing and came out quite well (although the “second batch” which I finished off looked neater as they hadn’t been as squashed!). I’m trying to eat a bit more healthily at the moment but I couldn’t resist eating one, and Frida devoured two scones as soon as they were out of the oven. 

Next time we make them we’ll do some savoury ones, as I do try and avoid giving Frida too much sweet food. 

You can read about last month’s cake baking efforts here: baking chocolate and banana cake.