2024 - What I did today

In the Lidl YS tray was clotted cream at 40p. Who could resist. In fact my pal took 3. I was a  bit restrained and only bought the one. Now P is not a dairy freak like me, so clotted cream doesn't hold much fascination, I on the other hand could just eat it by the spoonful.  So my new thing this week was to make some scones.  They're not something I've baked for absolutely ages, it must be 10 years at least, so  l consider it to be a 'new' thing.  There's nothing much to scones, flour sugar, butter and milk but a great deal of waffle about how to get a good, light rise. I refreshed my memory and googled recipes, all had lovely pictures of tall, risen,  golden topped scones.  I did as advised, rubbed in the flour, didn't knead or handle the dough too much, all the things mother told me as a kid when learning to cook. I only made half  batch of 6 scones and watched them in the oven as they developed a lovely golden top. Shame they didn't grow much. After all this care and attention why did they end up looking like rock cakes! I'm ashamed of myself.
Nevertheless they were very nice rock cakes, split, buttered topped with homemade blackberry jam and lashings of clotted cream.

Did you use self-raising flower or baking powder? Could be that the raising agent in either has lost its oomph.

Both. Can't imagine either are oomphless. I use them every week for baking.  Next pot of clotted cream (hopefully not too soon, my waistline can't cope) I'll try buttermilk scones which my pal says never fails. Rock cakes or not they were still very nice.