Hairy Bikers Cheese Scones Recipe

Gruyère, Parmesan and sweet red onion go into this Hairy Bikers cheese scones recipe, printed as cheese and red onion scones in Everyday Winners. And it bakes 12 tall ones in about an hour by my clock, and by my count each comes to roughly 305 calories.

“We love a good cheese scone and these little beauties are dialled up to 11”, Si and Dave write in Everyday Winners. And the onion topping turns the dial, because it cooks down first and then bakes onto each scone with the last of the Gruyère.

Stop mixing the moment the milk and egg disappear into the flour, since the book asks for mixing kept “to an absolute minimum”. Then push the cutter straight down without a twist, which I find keeps the sides tall and the scones standing straight.

Hairy Bikers Cheese Scones Recipe

Author: Alex Saidani Cooking Method:Baking Cuisine:British Courses:Snack

Difficulty:BeginnerPrep time: 20 minutesCook time: 40 minutesRest time: minutesTotal time:1 hour Servings:12 servingsCalories:305 kcal Best Season:Summer

Description

Sliced red onions soften slowly in butter and oil with thyme, then go sticky and caramelised in a hotter pan. Then a rubbed-in dough gets two cheeses and za’atar or thyme, is patted 3cm thick and stamped into rounds. So each round goes into a hot oven under onion and Gruyère, rising craggy in 12 to 15 minutes.

Ingredients

For the onion topping

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 15g butter
• 2 red onions, sliced
• A few thyme leaves
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 1 tbsp red wine or sherry vinegar
• Sea salt and black pepper

For the scones

• 450g self-raising flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1½ tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 125g butter, chilled and diced
• 100g Gruyère cheese, grated
• 50g Parmesan cheese, grated
• 1 tbsp za’atar or 1 tsp dried thyme
• 150ml milk
• 1 egg

To glaze

• 1 egg, beaten with 1 tbsp water

Instructions

1. Cook the onions: heat 1 tbsp olive oil and 15g butter in a lidded sauté pan. Then add 2 sliced red onions and a few thyme leaves, partly cover and cook gently, stirring often. Keep going until they are soft, translucent and collapsed, about 15 minutes in my pan.
2. Make them jammy: stir in 1 tbsp caster sugar and 1 tbsp red wine or sherry vinegar and season well. Then turn up the heat and keep stirring until the onions are caramelised and slightly jammy, which takes me another 10 minutes.
3. Heat the oven: preheat it to 200°C/Fan 180°C/Gas 6 and line a baking tray with baking parchment.
4. Rub in: put 450g self-raising flour, 1½ tsp baking powder, 1 tsp sugar and 1 tsp salt in a food processor or stand mixer. Then add 125g chilled diced butter and mix until the texture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
5. Add the cheese: stir in 65g of the grated Gruyère, all 50g of the Parmesan and 1 tbsp za’atar or 1 tsp dried thyme. Then mix 150ml milk with 1 egg, add it and mix as little as possible before turning the dough out onto a floured surface.
6. Shape: knead very gently and briefly, just until the dough comes together, then pat it into a round about 3cm thick. Then dip a 6cm cutter in flour and cut straight down without twisting, squeezing the offcuts together to cut again for 12 scones.
7. Top: set the scones on the tray and brush with 1 egg beaten with 1 tbsp water. Then spread the onions over the tops, pressing down very lightly, and sprinkle over the remaining 35g of Gruyère.
8. Bake: bake for 12 to 15 minutes until well risen and craggy. Serve warm from the oven, or cool and store in an airtight container.

FAQs

Is there an easy plain Cheddar version?

Yes, tucked under a sweet scone in Mums Know Best, where a WI-style batch gets a savoury switch at the end of the recipe. So the 55g of caster sugar becomes 55g of grated Cheddar and half a teaspoon of mustard powder, with no egg at all. And the yoghurt “helps the scones to rise”, so with no onions to cook it is my weekday batch, baked at 220°C.

Can I use a different cheese?

I find any hard, strong cheese works, though I keep a salty one like Parmesan in the mix for the crust. For blue cheese, Brilliant Bakes adds hazelnuts and says a crumbly Stilton “disperses through the mixture better than the creamier sort”. And if you want the savoury hit without onions, their cheese and Marmite scones whisk the Marmite into warm milk first.

Why are my cheese scones flat instead of light and fluffy?

In my kitchen it is nearly always warm butter, so mine stays in the fridge until the moment it goes into the flour. And a cutter pressed into the offcuts too many times gives me the flattest ones, so I squeeze them together once and stop. Then the tray goes straight into the heat as soon as the onions are on, since a batch left sitting rises less for me.

Are the Hairy Bikers cheese scones on BBC Food?

Not as far as I can find, because the three scones of theirs on BBC Food are pogácsa, maple syrup and walnut, and tattie scones. And the Big Book of Baking pogácsa, raised with yeast, has its own page here as their bacon scones (pogácsa). So of the cheese scones in their books, the Everyday Winners one on this page is the one I would start with.

What do you serve cheese scones with, and how long do they keep?

Plenty of butter, as the book insists, and a bowl of their tomato soup with fresh tomatoes for lunch. And the book only says an airtight container, though I find them best that day and fine the next after a warm-up. But it says nothing about freezing, and I have not frozen this batch, so I cannot promise how the onion topping would thaw.