When I attempted a storage clear out recently I found a box that said Thirty Scone Recipes. Inside were scone recipes clipped from magazines and newspapers ranging from the 1970’s to the 2010’s.

Scones are cool.  I’ve baked a lot of scones over the years and the basic formula of some flour, some butter and some milk transforms simple ingredients into quick, inexpensive, impressive treats.

These recipes had seen better days. They were stuck together and looked like they had experienced quite a bit of water damage. There were no food writers names or clues about the publications they came from.

I was intrigued to read them and make sure I didn’t end up with recipe FOMO before all the recipes fell apart.

So I took a dive into the box and was carefully reading them when something exciting emerged.

In those 30 scone recipes there was a mini pop-history of scones.

There were variations on the traditional scone, the cheese scone, the sweet scone, the legendary lemonade scone and even more recipes announcing the arrival of the gluten free scone in the 21^st century.

Some of the recipes made only subtle changes to basic scone ingredients while others provided exceptionally generous amounts of extra ingredients.

All the recipes were based on 2 cups of flour.

So here we go. A mini pop-history of 30 Shades of Scones.

THE SAVOURY  SCONE 

There were 6 cold butter or melted butter varieties. The butter quantities ranged from 1/8 cup to 1/2 cup.

The milk quantities ranged from 1/2 cup to 1 cup. There was one that simply said: ‘Milk. Enough to make a wettish dough’.

The older recipes had ‘one teaspoon salt’ while more recent ones had chosen the less contentious option of ‘a pinch of salt’.

THE CHEESE SCONE

The 7 cheese scone recipes had a crazy number of choices between very frugal or extremely generous quantities of cheese.

There was one using 1/4 cup of grated cheese. Most recommended a cup of grated cheese. Most also recommended ‘sprinkle more grated cheese on top before putting in oven’.

There was one that rose above the cheese scone crowd. It should be named The Dairy Industry Shout Out Scone. It had 3 cups of cheese, plus a 1/3 cup of butter, plus a cup of milk. All in a recipe that only specified 2 cups of flour.

THE LUXURY SCONE  

There were 7 sugar based recipes for buttermilk scones, ricotta scones, yoghurt scones and for good measure some of those also added cream or sour cream into the mix.

One recipe heated the milk before adding it into the mixture. One used icing sugar instead of sugar.

There were orange and lemon and peach and raspberry and blueberry and coconut and lime offerings.

All recommended glorious presentations including whipped cream, clotted cream, jams, lemon curd, icings, passionfruit pulp and fresh fruit.

THE GLAMOROUS SCONE

Next came 5 recipes for The Lemonade Scone using just 3 ingredients – flour, carbonated lemonade and cream. Now that recipe sure put some fizz into the scone community.

I made this legendary recipe for the first time in the 1990’s and it keeps popping up in recipe forums every few years.

This scone may have tossed the butter in favour of cream but it stays true to the spirit of scone ingredients – some flour, some fat, some liquid. Different versions simply changed the quantity of one ingredients or another.

You can also make a savoury version by swapping out the lemonade for soda water. Genius.

The Lemonade Scone got the stamp of approval from the Australian Country Women’s Association and I would be totally guided by this iconic organisation.

THE ZEITGEIST SCONE

Then 5 gluten free scones arrived, swapping out wheat-based flour for a blend of gluten-free flours. Some offered dairy-free, vegan or low FODMAP options. The most adventurous one included instructions to make mini scones in mini cup-cake trays and ingredients that included brown butter, hazelnuts and prunes.

4 of the gluten-free scone recipes included an egg or two in the mix.

There is no need to add an egg to create a fine fluffy textured scone, not even in gluten free scones, but several food writers decided to add an egg or two anyway.

Which inevitably leads to the question.

Is it a scone if it has eggs in the recipe?

I complete my mini pop-history of 30 Shades of Scones with a considered response to the egg-in-scone controversy based on conjecture, fact and fiction.

THE EGG-IN-SCONE CONTROVERSY

There is a recipe called a Rock Cake which has the same ingredients as scones except the Rock Cake has the addition of an egg. This recipe has been around since the Second World War. The name has got nothing to do with its texture. It’s not hard like a rock. It doesn’t taste like a rock. It’s got nothing to do with Rock ‘n Roll.  It was named a Rock Cake based on its look.

The base ingredients for scones that include an egg are the same as for rock cakes. The ingredient measurements are quite similar to the rock cake.  A key difference is that egg scones are shaped to resemble a scone not a rock. Which is possibly why some food writers quietly re-shaped the Rock Cake concept into the world of scones.

THE ROCK STAR SCONE

The scone that uses an egg or two deserves its own name having successfully made it into the 21st Century. They taste as fantastic as all the other types of scones.  Let’s call them a cousin of the rock cake. So I’ve decided to name this variety The Rock Star Scone     

May your scones rise up in whatever shades you make

May you always have success with the awesome scones you bake