Recipe: Cream Scones and Homemade Butter

This scone recipe comes from an adorable cookbook I just purchased used from Amazon to share with my grandson when we cook together. It's called The Pooh Cookbook, and was inspired by Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne. One of the chapters is called, "Smackerels, Elevenses, and Teas" and another is called, "Provisions for Picnics and Expotitions". It also includes a recipe to make butter. I remember making butter as a science experiment in grade school by shaking cream in an empty baby food jar; does anyone else remember doing this?

CREAM SCONES

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

1 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 Tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon honey or 1 teaspoon sugar
1 large egg
1/4 cup light cream

Sift the flour with the baking powder and salt. Cut the butter into the flour with a pastry blender or two knives until it looks like coarse meal.

Stir the honey or sugar, the egg and cream together. Add to flour mixture. Beat well but do not overwork.

Pat the dough on a floured board or between sheets of wax paper until about 1/2" thick.

Cut it in rounds, squares, triangles, or, if you are very clever, make tracings of Pooh and Piglet and the other animals and cut around the tracings. Bake on a cookie sheet for 10 minutes. Serve hot with sweet butter that you have made (see below) or with honey butter.

MAKING BUTTER

1/2 pint heavy cream
1 bowl
1 rotary beater
5 cups ice water
1 wire strainer
1 large spoon

Let the cream stand in the bowl at room temperature for an hour.

Put on an apron or an old blouse. Then beat the cream with the rotary beater. When butter curds form, strain off the buttermilk.

Continue beating until the cream is butter and can be beaten no longer.

Put the butter in the strainer and pour the ice water over it.

Put the butter back in the bowl and work it with the back of the spoon until the last of the buttermilk can be poured off.

This is sweet butter. If you prefer salt butter, stir in 1/2 teaspoon of coarse salt. If you would like to make honey butter, add 1/2 cup of honey to 1/2 cup of butter. Stir them together.