Wheaten scones with comté and pickled walnuts

Portion size: Serves 6
Prep time 20 min, plus 30 min chilling. Cook time 20 min
Difficulty: easy

Freezable

Vegetarian

Rosie Mackean

Chef and food writer

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Rosie Mackean’s crumbly wheaten scones will delight your guests. These soda bread-style bakes make the perfect starter for six people, served with nutty comté cheese and pickled walnuts.

Serve as part of Rosie’s relaxed three-course menu, followed by crab and prawn pot pies for the main and chocolate pannacottas for dessert.

A chef, food stylist and dinner party revivalist, Rosie completed her chef’s training before spending two years working in London kitchens. Obsessed by cookery books and TV cookery programmes, she turned her passion into a career working on cookbooks and shows such as Nadiya’s Family Favourites for the BBC and Gino’s Italian Family Adventure for ITV. She has a popular Substack, The Dinner Party, and published her first book in 2024: Good Time Cooking (Pavilion Books £26).

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Ingredients

225g plain flour
225g wholemeal flour, plus extra to dust
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp fine salt
175g very cold butter (see ‘know how’), plus extra at room temperature to serve
50g golden syrup
300ml buttermilk
200g comté cheese, shaved into thin slices, to serve
6 pickled walnuts, sliced, to serve

Specialist kit

8cm round cutter

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Method

Make sure all your scone ingredients (everything except the comté cheese and the walnuts) are weighed and ready to go before you start. Combine both flours, the bicarb and salt in a large mixing bowl. Take the cold butter and grate it coarsely on a box grater into the bowl (see know how), then toss to coat well in the flour mixture.
Make a well in the middle, then add the golden syrup and pour in the buttermilk. Use a table knife to cut, rather than stir, the ingredients together until they form a shaggy, crumbly dough. Turn it out onto a floured surface and bring together the dough by pressing and folding the straggly crumbly bits together. After only a few folds and flips it will be just about homogenous – don’t knead it! You should still be able to see flakes of butter.
Roll out the dough into a 1cm thick square, then cut out 6-8 scones using the round cutter. You may need to re-roll for the last one or two. Line 2 baking trays, arrange the scones on them, leaving plenty of space between, then chill for 30 minutes in the fridge.
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Heat the oven to 210°C/ 190°C fan/gas 6½. Bake the scones for 20 minutes, rotating the trays after 15 minutes for even browning. Transfer the hot scones to a wire rack to cool. Serve with plenty of butter, alongside slices of comté and the pickled walnuts.