Pesto Scones

So a few weeks (months?) ago, I joined a few Twitter friends to go on a “Cake Crawl” around Clifton Village. We finished the crawl at Cordial and Grace and because we were all pretty cake’d out by that time, we went for the savoury cream tea option. We had pesto scones with cream cheese and a yummy chutney. I’ve been back a few times since, and had the savoury scones, but I haven’t seen the pesto scones since. I was thinking about an old cookbook this weekend (the only one I had growing up if you don’t count the half binder of microwave cooking magazine issues – which I do not) and one of the few recipes I remembered making was cheese scones. From cheese to pesto – it wasn’t too much of a stretch, and I thought it was worth an experiment. Its a simple recipe using all ingredients that you probably already have (and if you don’t…what do you have in your cupboards?!)

• 225g / 8oz self raising flour
• Pinch of salt
• 55g / 2oz butter
• 90ml/3 fl oz milk
• 3 tbsp pesto (well, I just added what was left in the jar I had, which was about 3 tbsp. I think I would have added a little more if I could)

Turn the oven on to 220C/Gas Mark 7. Mix together the flour and salt (already done in the ingredients photo) and rub in the butter – remember how you were taught at school? I hate rubbing in butter, normally I just chuck everything into my food processor.

Stir in the pesto and add half the milk. Mix it together to get a dough, adding more milk as needed. (My original recipe said to use 5 fl oz of milk, but I only needed 3 fl oz to make it into a sticky dough. Because the pesto is oily, its something you’ll need to judge yourself if you use more pesto)

Knead the dough on a floured surface to make it a bit more uniform (and a bit less sticky!)

Roll it out…

Cut out as many rounds as possible and put onto a baking tray. Knead the left over dough together and roll out again, cutting out more rounds until its all used up. The mini scones were cut with the smallest cutter – they do shrink a little. Next time, I think I’d use one thats at least 3 inches across.

Brush the tops with milk (if you remember…) and bake for about 12-15 minutes (depending on the size) until they’re well risen and golden.

I ate mine with Philadelphia and a caramelised red onion chutney from M&S that honestly, I would eat from the jar if I could. These are best eaten the same day you make them – they weren’t inedible the next day, they just weren’t as good. If someone is coming round, these would be so easy to put together – they took less than half an hour to make and bake.