Sunday, 19 April 2020

50 Scones In One Day

It was my lockdown gift to myself: a challenge to bake one single scone from every recipe in the National Trust Book of Scones IN ONE DAY. 

Why? Why would I attempt such an audacious, some would say pointless, exercise? I was actually feeling quite confident about it. On the plus side, we were four weeks into COVID lockdown part one and I was very bored with lots of time on my hands. 

On the less plus side, there are 50 recipes in the National Trust Book of Scones and the country was facing a national flour shortage at the time. 

How did I get on? You can relive the experience below, using the tweets from my live Twitter stream, or read the Twitter thread itself.


We’re underway here at National Trust Scone Blogger Towers. We’re following in the path of Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids and baking one single scone from every recipe in the Book of Scones (until we run out of flour).


A weird feeling weighing out 5g of walnuts and then an even weirder one of seeing one single scone sitting on the worktop but we’re underway and motoring.



Three scones in and first measuring calamity; I put the zest of a whole lemon into the mixture for one scone. Never mind, I like them zesty.


So this is what happens when you put 10x the amount of lemon zest into the mixture for a single scone.

Four scones complete. I’m just off on a quick break to ask myself why I’m doing this, then I’ll be right back to continue the challenge.


We’re back. A quick summary of what we’ve learnt so far: 1. Scones are sociable. They don’t like to be baked alone. 2. Scones are impatient and do not want to wait for a completely different scone to be prepped to join it in the oven. 3. This is a challenge. Onwards.

I feel like I’m doing a marathon and you’re all waiting by the side of the road for me to appear, with increasing levels of concern as I stagger past with 20 miles still to go. Anyway. I’m still going. Stand by for the next four.

Four more scones! That takes me to...eight. *cries*


For anyone still following: 1. It is impossible to cut marshmallows with a knife. If you can’t get mini ones, pull large ones apart by hand. They look like used chewing gum in your mixture but you’ll still be sane. 2. Have a bomb disposal expert handy to handle the cocoa powder.

Four more scones make it to the podium, taking us to 12 (yay) out of 50 (gah).


Flour supplies are dwindling. I won’t lie to you - I tell you this with some relief.

Four more plucky scones are shepherded over the line! SIXTEEN!


And it’s all over! The flour supply is exhausted! The Scone Blogger gave it her all to get two final scones onto the scoreboard but she’ll be disappointed at having to finish on 18.

Team photo: Cheese, Fruit, Triple Choc, Lemon, Fig/Walnut/Orange, Apple/Cinnamon, Blueberry/Lemon, Maple/Walnut, Ginger/Treacle, Lemon/Coconut, Cherry/Vanilla, Choc/Orange, Raspberry/White Choc, Earl Grey, Hazelnut/Blue Cheese, Cherry/Almond, Stilton/Cranberry, Choc/Marshmallow.


I have sometimes found myself wondering whether I should try and complete the task by baking the other 32 in a single day. 18 scones was really quite pathetic and I'm sure I could do better. And then I come to my senses and realise that with a first tweet at 7.41am and a final tweet at 6.39pm, I'm not sure the flour was the problem.