My Kitchen Rules - or at least my scones do

Today is cold and miserable, in spite of the extra hour gained thanks to the end of daylight saving. So what better day to do some baking, I figured. Being without the classic baker's kitchen that my mother possesses (pantry always stocked with rations in case of siege; she could survive for a month on tinned food alone, without cooking a thing), I decided that scones were the order of the day, but they were a little bland for my taste. I figured I'd hit up my trusty friend google for some inspiration on variations, other than the usual cheesy scone, and boy did I open a minefield.

Turns out that the simple scone recipe I've been using since child hood (self raising flour, butter and milk - it doesn't get any easier) is not to be found anywhere online. Instead, there was a website boasting that it had an egg-free recipe - since when were eggs involved? - another with baking powder, eggs and cream, not to mention countless other twists. And that was just for the basic scone itself. I'd heard of a mix using plain flour and lemonade before (always looked down upon by my otherwise easygoing mother and grand mother, but favoured by the cooking-hater Nana), but never had I considered that there could possibly be so many ways to bake a scone. The humble scone, typically served with jam and cream, delicious any way you look at it (although not usually described as light and fluffy, as one American website had it...light and fluffy is no suitable vehicle for jam and cream, methinks, or at least in the proportions that I enjoy it).

So here I am...looking down the barrel of not finding a suitable variation on a classic because I got bogged down in the mire of what exactly is involved in the basic recipe. Who dared to mess with a classic, I ask you? Not me. I've got my milk, I've got my butter, I've got my flour. In about 20 minutes, I will also have my scones. Somewhat longer than that, and I might even fill in the pitiful few readers out there with an update on exactly what has kept me offline for about a month. But let's not be too rash. After all, baking waits for no man. Or woman. Or blog.