With the weather turning a bit chillier in the evenings, I decided to make cottage pie for our evening meal. Having made the mashed potato to put on top of the mince I suddenly remembered this recipe. Time and time again I have looked at this recipe and time and time again I have forgotten to take a few spoonfuls out from a pan of mashed potatoes so I can make this recipe. Today, I remembered, you only needed 100g, which actually isn’t very much at all, just 2-3 tablespoons.
I made this recipe after we’d had our evening meal, so we ended up eating them for our pudding! They were very quick and simple to make.
The oven was put on to preheat at Fan 200°C (I actually put mine on at 180°C by mistake) and two baking trays were lightly greased.
Into a bowl I measured out 175g plain flour and 3 teaspoons baking powder (that seemed an awful lot). To this I then added 50g butter and rubbed it in with my fingers until the mixture resembled breadcrumbs. 40g caster sugar was added together with the 100g mashed potato. Mary says to mix the sugar and potato in with a fork to prevent the potato forming lumps. At first I didn’t think it would work, but it did if you slightly pressed down with the fork as you stirred the mixture. To bring it together I added 3 tablespoons milk.
Once it had formed a dough it was turned out onto a lightly floured board and kneaded very lightly. The dough was rolled out to a thickness of 1cm and cut into rounds using a 5cm fluted cutter (mine was more like 6cm, so they were slightly larger than they should have been). These were transferred to the baking tray. Mary says you should be able to make 12 scones, I made 10 as my cutter was slightly bigger.
The scones went into the oven for 15 minutes after which time they were golden brown, but they certainly hadn’t risen very much! I was quite disappointed to see this, especially with the amount of baking powder that went in to the mixture. I wasn’t that happy, so quickly googled ‘potato scones’ and was pleased to see that they should in fact resemble a drop scone or griddle scone, so shouldn’t be huge.
It was now time for tasting, Mary says to serve them warm and buttered. I’m not a lover of butter, so I just had a huge dollop of home-made jam on them. They were surprisingly very sweet and very light. They were quite delicious. My husband very quickly ate 3 of them, so I think by the end of the evening they will have all disappeared.
If you want to make a savoury version, which I’d imagine would be quite nice with some crispy bacon or cheese, then omit the sugar and instead add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to the flour.
These were quick, easy and very tasty – just a shame they didn’t rise very much!
Self Raising Flower 