Make do and mend: potato scones

Well who even knew potato scones were a thing? Mary Berry did, that’s who.

Essentially what’s happened here is I found a bag of potatoes I’d forgotten about. I found them when I’d got back from collecting my shopping which contained… a bag of potatoes.

So, I was suddenly in possession of a lot of potatoes, and as much as I love potatoes, and I really really do, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them. There is only so much potato a person can eat, you know.

Luckily, in reading one of my Mary Berry recipe books, I remembered I’d seen a recipe for potato scone. At the time I thought “why would you make potato scones?”. I now realise you make potato scones when you have a sudden influx of potatoes, or you’re rationing in 1942.

I actually googled to see if anyone else had made these, and a couple of people had. They suggested that to get 12 scones like the recipe suggested, they had to stretch the dough a bit and therefore the scones were quite flat, and flatter than they had expected.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like a flat scone! So I made the executive decision to make fewer scones, and have them be a bit taller. Even though I had done that I still ended up with about 15 scones so I don’t know what happened. I made sure I used the right sized cutter as well because I measured it. This always seems to happen to me!

Now when I read the recipe, I wasn’t sure what the potato was replacing. But when I started making these, I realised of course it was to replace the egg. This still has milk in, but I guess you could use oat milk or a milk alternative which doesn’t have a strong flavour (i.e. not almond milk!) instead and then these would be vegan? I used goats milk, and only about 2tbsp.

I was a little bit disappointed as these cracked in the oven a little bit; I’m not sure if that’s because I’m historically not very good at kneading? When things like this happen to me, I say things like ‘oh well, they look rustic!’ And I definitely think that’s the case here.

These are so tiny and so crumbly, they actually fell apart a little bit when I cut one to try it. And if I didn’t know these had potato in, I still think I would be able to tell these aren’t made with a traditional scone recipe because there is definitely a taste that comes with them that I don’t think I’m too keen on. I did debate making these scones a bit bigger, but I don’t think you’d really want them any bigger because the taste would be too overpowering.

I had eaten a plain scone the day before this which may have clouded my judgement slightly, but it was much nicer than these and it definitely did not have an aftertaste.

Now Mary says these scones are best warm and with butter. But, I wondered, could you put jam on a scone that’s got potato in it?

Well, I tried it and I would say the answer is no. I think if you could get past the slightly odd taste that these have, they might be a good vegan alternative.

They actually might be alright if you made them savoury and put some cheese in them? But sadly I don’t think I’ll be making these again — sorry Mary 🙁

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to this blog to get email notifications about my latest blog posts. It doesn’t cost anything and in the words of my mum, “you don’t get loads of spam.”

You can also follow me on Instagram: @flynntacularbakes