Emily’s Baking Powder Biscuits and Scones from the Banff Springs
For Mothers’ Day, Ali taught Emily how to make baking powder biscuits. We ate them for dessert, split and filled with strawberries, after a roast ham, beans baked in the slow cooker, and new potatoes. Sadly, the corner store was out of whipping cream, and E came home with a tub of Cool Whip. It was like putting Cheese Whiz on freshly baked bread.
They were pretty delicious biscuits. Made with butter (not shortening, as the recipe below suggests), they weren’t as tall as some, but had a tender crumb, split beautifully and were quite perfect looking, like something you might see in a store.
Ali is a good cook, and tends to hang on to a recipe for dear life if she finds one she likes. This is the sole recipe taped to her fridge, torn from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook:
And, as promised, the recipe for scones from the Fairmont Banff Springs. It’s a large recipe – but who knows? Someone out there may have occasion to make ten dozen scones? If you have a kitchen scale (and I really think everyone should, it makes baking so much easier and more accurate) it would be easy to cut it down to a more manageable quantity. I’ll do that another time – I promised myself I’d be in bed by 11 tonight (CBC tomorrow morning) and it’s 11:02.
Scones for Afternoon Tea at the Banff Springs
thanks to Executive Pastry Chef Stephen Garton
2 kg Bread Flour
2 kg Pastry Flour
40 g Salt
1.2 kg Unsalted Butter
800 g Granulated Sugar
150 g Baking Powder
12 large Eggs
1.6 L Buttermilk
500 g raisins (optional)Mix butter, sugar, salt, baking powder and flours into a crumble mixture. Mix in milk and eggs until just incorporated. Roll out dough to about 18-20 mm thick. Cut desired size.
Bake at 170C (about 340F) for about 15 minutes, or until golden. Note *Our ovens are convection. Regular ovens can take longer.
Makes about 120 scones.
May 10 2010 11:03 pm | bread
Buddiegirl on 11 May 2010 at 12:37 am #
If I made 120 scones, I would probably eat 100 of them myself.
The very first time I ever ate scones with clotted cream, was at the Empress Hotel in Victoria. It was a memorable meal in many ways and it is the tea service standard that I hold all others to. I have also eaten the scones at the Banff Springs, at the Hotel MacDonald and at Chateau Lake Louise, and while all are different, they were equally as good.
Erica B. on 11 May 2010 at 9:18 am #
oOoOh Thank you for the recipe! Neither my KA Mixer or my largest bowl are big enough to adequately mix all that flour. I wonder if it’d work to halve the recipe (and give away lots to the neighbours)? Or could you mix up the dough form the scones then freeze half of them I wonder? IIRC Three Sisters markets a cook from frozen scone so maybe??
thepinkpeppercorn on 11 May 2010 at 9:34 am #
Dang! Now I have to make scones!! If only my feet will hold up for the adventure. Thanks Julie!
eprairiegrrl on 11 May 2010 at 10:57 am #
Fort Calgary also has awesome scones (been there for a couple of training/conference sessions). Love to see their recipes
Aimee on 11 May 2010 at 11:49 am #
120 scones? That is heaven to me. We’ll probably go through that in a morning when my family arrives for a mini-reunion next month.
Good think I’ve got a well-stocked jam pantry to back them up.
kturneris@shaw.ca on 11 May 2010 at 4:12 pm #
I love biscuits…no, I adore them. My husband’s granddad (who was a baker by trade) passed along his preference to make the crumble mixture by hand and not cut in the shortening/butter/lard with knives or a pastry cutter. I find my scones or biscuits turn out better. But that could just be coincidence.
Carolyn on 11 May 2010 at 6:27 pm #
Ohhh…. I’ve been hungry for scones for weeks and got even hungrier for them after reading about your lovely time in Banff. I think I’ll have to give in and make these… not exactly health food, but one only lives once! Thanks for this!
Carolyn on 11 May 2010 at 6:34 pm #
Ohhh…. I’ve been hungry for scones for weeks and got even hungrier for them after reading about your lovely time in Banff. I think I’ll have to give in and make these… not exactly health food, but one only lives once! Thanks for this!
Here is the recipe cut down to make 10 (divided orignal recipe by 12):
167g bread flour
167g pastry flour
3g salt
100g butter
67g sugar
12.5g baking powder
1 large egg
133 ml buttermilk (approx 1/2 c + 2 tsp)
42g raisins
Lori on 11 May 2010 at 8:37 pm #
How in the world do you get recipes from these people and places? Is it because of your fame? Or are you just that charming?
Thanks for sharing these with us!
JulieVR on 11 May 2010 at 8:39 pm #
All you have to do is ask!
Vivian on 11 May 2010 at 8:58 pm #
Thanks Carolyn (and Julie)…I LOVE my scale…so helpful in the kitchen. Off to make scones ala BSH in a family quantity!
Indian Curry Lover on 14 May 2010 at 9:29 pm #
I tried your recipe and it is very good and satisfying.Thank you for the recipe and i will recommend others to try this one.. thanx
Heather on 15 May 2010 at 1:38 am #
oooh the Fannie Farmer one is the one I use!
Irene on 22 Jul 2010 at 5:53 am #
This is how many biscuits . plus a few more we make once a month for our brunches.
Roja on 08 Dec 2010 at 3:21 pm #
Julie, I’ve read your ‘afternoon tea at Banff Springs’ entry so many times, it’s so entrancing! Thanks for posting the scone recipe.
Question- what do you do for clotted cream in Calgary?
JulieVR on 08 Dec 2010 at 3:44 pm #
Clotted cream can be had at Sunterra!
Jaelyn on 26 Sep 2011 at 10:43 pm #
If time is money you’ve made me a wetaliher woman.
zprgpb on 27 Sep 2011 at 3:21 am #
aVEmYt gnsswbtprova