Jill Can Cook: Garlic Cheddar Scones

I've been really interested in trying to make dinner rolls/biscuits from scratch. We really like having a bread product with dinner (or breakfast) but I don't always buy dinner rolls or Grands biscuits because they can be a little expensive. I really love garlic bread and I have been known to eat an entire loaf on my own (granted, not all during one meal!! I'm bad, but not that bad! Hahah).

So, I wanted a bread product. I was craving garlic. And like usual, I had an ingredient that I had hanging around with no use for: cheese. Surprisingly, it wasn't hard finding a recipe that encompassed all my needs/desires. I used this recipe at All Recipes.

Garlic Cheddar Scones

Ingredients:

• 2 cups self-rising flour 
• 2 tablespoons butter 
• 1 pinch salt 
• 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese 
• 1 clove garlic, minced (I used garlic salt)
• 1 cup milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Lightly grease a baking sheet.
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour and salt. Rub in butter lightly with finger tips until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Stir in cheese and garlic. Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour in the milk, reserving 1 teaspoon for a glazing the scones. Gently mix, just until combined.
3. Turn out onto a lightly floured board and knead briefly and lightly. Be careful not to overwork the dough. Press out dough to form a 1 inch thick round. Cut into 8 wedges. Place on prepared tray and brush with reserved milk.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 10 to 20 minutes, or until light brown. Serve hot or let cool on a wire rack.

I don't own self-rising flour. I checked out the prices for it at the grocery store the other day and it seemed pretty outrageously priced. I almost nixed this scone recipe, until I found out that with just a few ingredients that I already had on hand, I could make self-rising flour!! All I needed was:

• 1 cup All Purpose Flour  
• 1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder  
• 1/2 tsp Salt  

Nothing exciting here, but this is my "self-rising flour."

All you have to do is whisk it together and that's it. Super easy and super cheap. Whew, that was close. Also, that recipe is per cup. The scone recipe needed 2 cups of self-rising flour, so I doubled it. Now back to my scones:

I had some cheese slices to use up. I originally bought them to make the kids some grilled cheese sandwiches, but I used up all the bread and still had a few slices of cheese left. These would be great in my scones. But, I somehow had to grate them. This would prove to be pretty impossible.

I tried. I really, really tried, but this did not work at all.

First of all, the cheese was kind of crumbly, so that alone made this difficult. On top of that, I was afraid to grate the skin off of my hand, so I might've given up prematurely. Anyway, this cheese was going to be melted into the scones, so I wasn't too worried about having uniformly grated cheese.

See?! You can't even tell the cheese was mostly just broken apart by hand!

The dough ended up being a little on the sticky side, so I used a hefty amount of flour. I patted it into a roundish shape, then cut it up like a pizza. I ended up with 8 triangular scones, of varying sizes.

I popped them into the oven and when they were done, I was very impressed that the homemade self-rising flour worked!

I might've left them in a little too long, but they still tasted wonderfully!

Joe was also impressed that I didn't have to buy the $4.00 thing of self-rising flour to make these scones. They were a little more work than your average pre-made dough or dinner rolls, but the flavor was definitely worth the extra effort.

I also think this could be one of those recipes that you can make into your own. I made mine with garlic and cheese, but they could easily be made with one or the other or neither or something entirely different. The sky's the limit. 

I'm giving this recipe an A.

P.S. We obviously didn't eat all 8 scones that night, so we saved the extras and reheated them the next day. They tasted great as leftovers as well!