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National Cream Tea Day

Today is National Cream Tea Day, and what could be better than sitting outside in the glorious sunshine enjoying some freshly made scones?
Here is one of my grandmother’s recipes for the perfect scone.

Ingredients

225g Self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
55g Butter
25g Caster Sugar
150ml Milk
1 Egg, beaten

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 220C/425F/Gas 7. Lightly grease a baking sheet.
  2. Mix together the flour and salt and rub in the butter.
  3. Stir in the sugar and then milk to make a soft dough.
  4. Turn onto a floured work surface and knead very lightly, pat out the dough so that it is about 2cm thick. Using a 5cm cutter, cut the dough into circles and place on the baking sheet. Continue this process until all the dough is used.
  5. Brush the tops of the scones with the beaten egg and bake for 12-15 minutes until well risen and golden.
  6. Place on a wire rack to cool completely. Serve with jam and clotted cream. Enjoy!

If you do make these, please let us know via our Facebook and Twitter.

Can you make toast in a microwave?

 

Here at Cookers and Ovens, we get many questions to do with our products, and we are always happy to help. This question, however, is one of the strangest ones we have had in a while, yet we are happy to find the answer.

Due to how microwaves work, you can not make toast in one. To make toast you need radiant heat to make the bread dry out, in a microwave the waves cause the water molecules to move about and vibrate, but this means that they do not escape and cause the bread to dry out and have a rubbery texture. If you microwave the bread for long enough, then this does cause a dry, bread-crumb texture but there is no sign of browning.

However, if you do want to make some toast, we have an excellent range of Smeg toasters, and a wide selection of microwaves with built-in grills, it’s the best of both worlds.