Pumpkin Orange Drop Scones

When Meeta of What's For Lunch Honey announced the ingredient of this month's FMR as Pumpkin, the first thing that came to my mind is something Indian. Like Sweet Pumpkin Puris. But then I had another think and decided I wanted to make something that I had not tried my hand at before. So I went to the library to search for a good recipe book which had english recipes using pumpkin. And I found a stupendous book which had 3 good recipes. Name of the book? THE COMPLETE BOOK OF HOME BAKING by HEILIE PIENAAR. Its like the bible of basic cooking with the easiest and tastiest recipes. I decided to make Pumpkin and Orange Scones, a very English Recipe. Thanks Meeta for this event. I would never have otherwise tried my hand at scones. Now I have another successfully tried and tested teatime snack in my recipe file.


Here's how I went about it:

Ingredients:

375 gms plain flour
4 tspn baking powder
scant 1/2 tspn salt
2 tblspn caster sugar
4 tblspns milk
4 tblspns orange juice
about 3 tblspns sunflower oil
1 large egg
1 tspn grated orange rind
250 gms cooked mashed pumpkin


Procedure:
1. Sift Flour baking powder and salt.
Add sugar.

2. In a separate bowl whisk together the milk, orange juice, oil , egg and rind. Mix this into dry ingredients. Add the mashed pumpkin and lightly mix. The dough is quite sticky. Just spoon out large portions onto a greased baking tray and bake at 200 degC for 10 to 12 mins. Brush the scones half way through with egg or milk to get a golden finish.
Turn out onto a wirerack to cool.

These are delicious with any hot soup. We had them with hot Carrot and Coriander soup. I am now off to Meeta's with my basket of Scones