Here is this year’s Christmas scone – Christmas Stollen Scones. They are bursting with Christmas flavours – rum soaked fruit, spice and marzipan. My family will be enjoying these and my mince pies when we gather round my daughter’s slightly out of tune piano to sing carols on Christmas Eve!
My Three Christmas Scones
Last year I baked Cranberry and Orange Scones for Christmas and the year before that we had Sweet and Spicy Gingerbread Scones.
Buttermilk
Making a cultured buttermilk is a very simple process. You can obtain dried buttermilk culture online – I use Freshly Fermented’s Organic Cultured Buttermilk Starter and find my simple method works well using this. I use this buttermilk as my liquid for making my scones. If you don’t have any buttermilk use sour milk or full cream milk.
Christmas Stollen Scones
14
servings30
minutes20
minutes2
hoursIngredients
6 ounces / 170 grams / ¾ cup mixed dried and glacé fruits soaked in 1 tablespoon of rum for at least 2 hours, preferably overnight. I used raisins, glacé cherries and candied peel
1 pound / 450 grams / 3 cups self raising flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon all spice
2 ounces / 55 grams / ¼ cup caster sugar
4 ounces / 110 grams / ¼ cup butter (softened)
4 ounces / 110 grams / ¼ cup marzipan (bought or homemade) cut into small pieces
½ pint buttermilk, full cream milk or sour milk
A little extra milk
- For optional topping
1 ounce / 30 grams / 0.125 cup butter melted
Icing sugar
Directions
- Place your chosen dried and candied fruit, cut into small pieces, in a bowl and spoon over a tablespoon of rum (or brandy).
- Cover the bowl and leave to soak for at least 2 hours.
- Pre-heat the oven to 220°C / 200°C Fan / 425°F / Gas Mark 7.
- Sift the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and all spice into a large mixing bowl.
- Stir in the sugar.
- Add the butter, cut into small pieces, and rub into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
- Stir in the soaked fruit and the small pieces of marzipan.
- Add the buttermilk or sour milk and mix to a soft dough. You may need a little more liquid.
- Tip dough onto a floured working surface and knead very lightly until smooth.
- Pat out to about 1½ inch thickness and cut into rounds with a metal cutter. I used a 2 inch / 5 cm cutter and made 14 scones.
- Place the scones on a well floured baking tray, or a baking tray lined with baking parchment.
- Brush the tops with a little milk and bake for 15-20 minutes until well risen and golden brown.
- You may find some melted marzipan seeps out of your scones – just remove this while the scones are hot.
- Brush the tops of the scones with melted butter and thickly dredge with icing sugar.
- Cool on a wire rack.
Serving Christmas Stollen Scones
I find these scones are best eaten at room temperature, split and spread with butter. They are quite rich and really don’t need jam or any other sweet spreads. My grandson didn’t even want butter, he said they are delicious by themselves.
They freeze well so can be made in advance and frozen for Christmas. Just wrap in foil and defrost in a hot oven for the best results.
Favourite Christmas recipes
I checked the other day and was very pleased to see that I now have around 20 Christmas recipes – here is a selection of my favourites:
Happy baking!
Tanya
