Scones | Pandan latte scones with low sugar and raisins

Hi Everyone, my name is Michele.

and today I’ll be making pandan scones in this video.

Pandan is a fragrant grass easily available in all tropical & subtropical regions and

and in Malaysia we use it in all kinds of savoury and sweet cooking recipes.

Today I’m making a sweet, buttery pastry popular among the British for tea time, Scones.

The only difference is that I’m adding in fresh pandan juice

as flavouring instead of vanilla essence.

So let’s begin by extracting pandan juice from the leaves.

I have already washed and cut up the pandan leaves

into smaller pieces so that it’s easier to blend.

and I am using 300ml of drinking water to blend with the leaves.

Even though I only need 100ml of pandan juice.

but because the leaf fibres tend to absorb moisture,

it’s better to be on the safe side and use more water rather than not having enough later.

Another reason is so that the blender does not burn out

water acts as a lubricant for the leave fibers.

Pandan leaves are really tough and long,

I’m using a 300W juice blender so I gave it a hand by cutting them up into smaller pieces.

I started with a small handful of the leaves.

Blended them really fine and let the colour, fragrance and flavour seep into the water.

Then using a coffee filter, I sieve out the fibers leaving only the pandan flavoured juice behind.

I tried to squeeze out as much of the liquid as I can.

without breaking the coffee filter.

Putting the fibers aside into a small bowl that I have prepared.

Then I poured the pandan juice back into the blender again to intensify the flavour.

I like how green and fresh the colour of the juice is.

It gives you a feeling that you’re eating something really healthy doesn’t it?

You can see that the amount of liquid that I squeezed out has dropped about 50ml.

Now let’s proceed to intensify the flavour.

Drop in more pandan leaves.

Blending the second batch intensifies the pandan flavour in the liquid.

When your friends ask what you are doing, you can literally answer

I am blending some grass to make scones.

Squeeze out the liquid to reduce any wastage.

Then I repeated this process for the third time.

More leaves, same liquid, more flavour.

Filter out the liquid for the last time.

With the complicated part done, lets move on to the dry ingredients.

Sieve out 250g of all purpose flour.

10g baking powder.

and add in 5g of salt.

Measure out 65g of cold butter cut into smaller chunks.

Rub butter chunks and flour together to create a sandy texture.

Gently squeezing the cold butter to melt them then coat them with flour.

If you have never done this before, I suggest to give this a try.

It is extremely calming if you close your eyes, squeeze the cold butter in your fingers.

and as it slowly melts and becomes oily,

the warm flour comes in and takes away the coldness from your fingers.

Then you find yourself searching for the next cold chunk of butter to experience this all over again.

It’s quite an interesting sensation. Give it a try and take your time.

Maybe I should say do this when you’re really depress and upset. Helps you to relax.

If you want to slow down the butter melting even further you can freeze it too!

It’s ok to have some small chunks of butter in the mix.

Measure out 100ml of pandan extract

This is about 100ml, slightly more but lets just proceed

Next, 40g of sugar, for those with low sugar diet or 60g for those who have sweet tooth.

Amount of sugar is adjustable based on the amount of raisins you plan to add.

and the amount of pandan flavour you use.

if you’re not adding any raisins, probably more sugar would be better.

Next I’m adding in milk powder. Most recipes call for full fat milk

but since I am using pandan juice, I can’t add in more liquid,

so I ended up using full fat milk powder.

Remember to stir it vigorously for quite a while to make sure the milk powder has dissolved.

Then in a separate bowl, beat 1 egg, where half of it shall be added into the pandan juice

and the other half used as egg wash.

Before you add the egg, give the pandan juice mix a taste test.

Once you tasted it, imagine the flavour diluted 5 times by the flour.

Is it fragrant enough? Sweet enough? Creamy enough?

For my mix, I think the pandan flavour taste is too intense hence a bit bitter.

Just like green tea(matcha) when you have added too much, it tends to ne bitter.

but I don’t want to increase the sugar level of my mix,

instead I increased the creamy flavour of my mix by adding 10g more of milk powder.

By the way if you taste your mix, at this stage it tastes very similar to green tea latte.

Just add some boiling hot water in and enjoy!!!

If you want to proceed to making scones, lets move on.

Stir in the milk powder vigorously until you’re happy then add in half the egg.

Stir in the egg well.

Pour in the pandan flavouring into the flour and give it a good mix.

There’s no particular technique involved I just mix.

I added in portion by portion because I don’t want it to stick to the bowl

which then will be difficult to wash.

and another advantage to pour in the mix slowly is so that I don’t add in too much liquid

since the amount of liquid I have is about 200ml.

Enough for a small cup of Pandan Latte!

Once mixed, the texture should be dry enough to form into a large clump but not wet and sticky.

Keep the dough loose so that your scones done come out too dense.

Pour it onto the table and roll it out into a thick 1 inch layer.

Heat up the oven to 200’C at this stage. I’m using a traditional bottom lit gas oven.

See how it doesn’t stick to the rolling pin. If it does, the amount of liquid is too high.

If it is too sticky it will taste good just that you can’t cut it with the cutter.

Just form them into blobs on your baking tray and bake them.

add some raisins on top of the dough and spread them out evenly.

the intention is to envelope the raisins in the dough so that the raisins don’t burn in the oven.

Thinking back I should have portioned the dough into 2.

Roll out half then cover the raisins with the other half.

Idea for the next video!

Push in any raisins you see poking out.

Give the dough an even thickness by slapping the side.

So that when you cut with the cutter the thickness is even.

Cut out the scones with a small cutter

I find the smaller cutter gives me the perfect portion for a small eater.

The dough got stuck to the table. I could have done is lightly flour the surface but

I could have prevented this by lightly flouring the table surface.

but it does make the dough more dry on the surface so it’s up to you.

I don’t mind it a bit more difficult to handle but then crispy on the outside and moist on the inside,

Since I didn’t lightly flour the surface of the table and the cutter,

I had to push out the dough from the cutter with my finger to ease them out slowly.

I removed some exposed raisins and replaced it with some dough.

I don’t want to burn the raisins.

I pushed the dough with my finger out slowly bit by bit.

This part of the dough is too thick. It will be difficult to remove from the cutter.

So I decided to just roll it out again, thinner this time.

Almost have almost used up the whole dough surface area.

So I pulled the dough together again and flatten them into an 1 inch thick flat dough.

When I arrange them on the tray I try to give them an inch

space in between since they will expand in the oven.

I pull the dough together every time I cut a hole in it until I have used up the whole dough.

Ok, the first bake is ready. Let’s put aside the first tray.

Let me use the next baking mat.

The last scone done!!

Let me just clean up the table.

Now I need to coat the surface with egg wash.

I coat the scones generously with egg wash so that it browns nicely.

Not just the top but the sides too.

Done, let’s bake the first tray.

The oven is at 200’C now.

Twenty minutes later…

Nice colour

20 minutes later, we have some beautifully coloured scones.

Let me remove the baking mat and replace it with the second mat .

Flip up the scones so that the bottom part gets to air itself and become crispy.

Then I leave them aside to let them cool and

and proceed with coating the next batch with egg wash.

I just want to turn your attention to this pool of egg wash.

I happen to notice that egg wash not only browns the scones, but it also increases crispiness.

I’ll show you how it turned out and what I mean later on.

into the oven it goes…

As for the rest of the scones, let me flip them on the side so that the top remains crispy too.

I took a few shots of them while they were standing on their sides.

Such beautiful colours.

Ok! The second batch is done! Time to place them in a bowl.

The pool of egg wash I highlighted just now,

turned out to be really crispy, you can hear the crispiness in the video.

Here , we have the completed pandan latte scones.

It’s not too hard is it?