Ingredients

Method

• 500 g good-quality cake flour
• 20 ml baking powder
• 2 T white sugar
• 2 pinches fine sea salt
• 100 g cold butter
• 60 g vegetable lard
• 2 extra-large free-range eggs, at room temperature milk
• cream, for serving
• jam, for serving

Method

Ingredients

1. Preheat the oven to 220°C. Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt.

2. Grate in the cold butter and lard. Rub in as quickly and lightly as possible, until a large breadcrumb texture is achieved.

3. Break the eggs into a jug and top up with milk until you have a volume of 400 ml in total. Lightly beat the eggs and milk.

4. Pour most of the liquid into the dry mixture and mix quickly and lightly until you’ve made a firm batter – not too dry, but not too wet either! Add the remaining milk-and-egg mixture if the batter is too dry.

5. Measure out 18 dollops of the mixture (a heaped tablespoon would be a good measurement for each dollop) and place on a lightly greased baking tray.

6. Pop the tray into the oven and set a timer for 5 minutes. Don’t open the oven until the timer goes off, then gently remove the tray from the oven and rotate. Pop them back in for a further 5 minutes, or until golden brown. If you have a convection oven, then leave them in for the full 10 minutes.

7. Allow to stand for 5 minutes, then enjoy with butter, cream and jam!

Cook’s note: On a busy day, chef and owner Karl Odendaal and his small team at The Scone Shack on Lalaphanzi Farm in Cape Point churn out no fewer than 400 scones, instantly wolfed down by delighted locals in the know.

Find more scone recipes here. 

Photograph: Andrea Van Der Spuy