Date and Orange or Date and Mandarin Scones

We love these scones, they are decadent but super easy to make. We like them equally with Oranges or Mandarins. Use what you have in the garden at the time. 

Ingredients

• 2 cups dried dates, cut in half
• 1/2 cup orange marmalade, preferably homemade
• 1/2 cup orange or mandarin juice
• zest of orange or mandarin
• 4 cups plain flour
• 4tsp baking power
• 2tsp cinnamon
• 100gm cold butter, cut up small
• 1/2 to 1 cup milk

Method

1. Mix dates, marmalade and orange juice together. 
2. Leave to soak a couple of hours, but best if overnight
3. Heat oven to 200C
4. Sift together the flour, baking powder and cinnamon
5. Rub butter into the dry ingredients
6. Add dates, marmalade, juice and 1/2 cup of milk.
7. Mix gently together with a knife
8. Add more milk if necessary to form a soft dough. Do not over mix
9. Flatten out and cut into 12 even sized pieces
10. Place on lined tray
11. Bake for 20mins

Serve warm with citrus butter or regular butter.

See Photo Below

Note:

Recently I left the dates, marmalade and juice soak together for 3 days . This was because our visitors, who I was making them for, were delayed 2 days. The dates absorbed nearly all the juice so we needed to used a cup of milk. The flavour of these scones was nicer  than when I left them over night like in the recipe. The dates were also softer and broke up as I mixed the scones, giving them a nicer taste.