Thursday 28 November 2013

Scones baked in Halogen cooker

We've had this new toy now for a couple of weeks and it has been proving its worth. I finally whipped up some scones using the Mary Berry Devonshire Scones Recipe with the added trick of freezing the flour first for about 30 minutes and then rubbing in soft butter.

The halogen oven usually cooks food in a quicker time and at a slightly lower temperature, however the scone recipe that came with the oven used the same heat and about the same time as Mary Berry's recipe. So I used: 220° for 12 minutes. Next time I might use 200° for 14-15 minutes.

This time I did not sieve the baking powder and flour as much as usual and I felt I could taste just a bare twang of baking powder on my tongue. Only because I saw Mary Berry the other day say something to the effect that the sieving was not necessary. Tosh! Sieve it well to mix and get rid of the baking powder taste.

The halogen oven only needs to pre-heat for a few minutes and uses so much less power than a conventional oven. I know because I have checked it against our power meter gizmo.

I didn't have a flat baking tin that made the best use of the available round size and shape of the oven so I covered the wire rack that came with it in two coats of foil which I buttered and floured. This I feel, affected the bake of the base of the scones and just a bare fraction undercooked the base compared to the top. Next time I'll make sure I am using a tin tray so that it conducts the heat better to the base of the scones.

Overall? The picture above is of the second and last batch of scones. The left taken just after it was put in and the right just before they were taken out 12 minutes later. Both pictures were taken at the point the halogen lamp was off so I do not know why there is such a colour difference. It is so much fun to be able to see everything cooking through the glass. They were scrummy and a bit too easy to eat with butter and just a swipe of strawberry jam. Yield 16 scones from 450 gm (1lb) flour.

1 comment:

rashbre said...

A round oven? I have missed out on this whole idea.