Sultana Scones

There are few smells in a kitchen better than a tray of scones in the last five minutes of baking. Butter, warm flour, the faint caramel of sultanas catching at the edges. It pulls people from other rooms. It always has.

A scone is one of the simplest things you can bake, which is exactly why so many turn out badly. The dough wants to be handled lightly, almost reluctantly, and the oven wants to be properly hot. Get those two things right and you're most of the way there. The rest is just butter, milk, a handful of plump sultanas, and a quick squeeze of lemon to wake up the raising agents. We're only making dinner. Or in this case, the thing that comes after lunch and before supper, which in my house is a meal in its own right.

These are the scones I make for a tea on a rainy afternoon, for a friend dropping by, for a church fete table, for the times when bread feels like too much trouble but a slice of toast feels like not enough. They take twenty minutes start to finish. They keep for a day, though they rarely need to. I wrote it down in the notebook years ago: flour, butter, sultanas, lemon. Hot oven. Don't fuss. That's still all there is to it.

Split them while they're still warm. Butter first, then jam, or jam first, then cream, depending on which side of the country you grew up on. I won't get involved in that argument. Your kitchen, your rules.