Microwave Cheese Scones with Oregano

This is a simple microwave cheese scones recipe which, today, I’ve used oregano in!  I do have a bigger recipe for microwave scones that uses more ingredients, but some days that’s either “too long winded” or I’ve not got the ingredients, so I devised my own cut down microwave cheese scones recipe using basic ingredients and without the extra work!

I’ll make these quick scones to go with a coffee, or as a quick extra side dish with chilli.  In the summer I’ll quite often make a quick batch if I’m dashing off out and want to take some savoury food with me, for a packed lunch or a picnic lunch.  These quick scones are also a brilliant side dish to any hot bowl of soup, or when I make up some simple chilli beans, as a dipping bread.

I am not entirely sure I’d really call these “scones”, but that was the the original recipe name, from a 1980s recipe.  What you get can be a scone shape, but these are just soft, no yeast, simple, tasty, savoury breads … with a variety of uses!

It’s super easy to scale this recipe up too, if you read to the end of the recipe!

The original recipe said to brown the scones under the grill after microwaving them – but I’ve left that stage out, so the photo represents the real end result – and I rarely grill them myself to be honest.  They’re plenty good enough to eat without that additional stage!

Once cooked these stand in their own right and aren’t sticky at all. They are a moist, soft, scone or bread.

Ingredients:

• 110 grams Self Raising flour
• a large pinch of salt (1/8th of a teaspoon)
• 12 grams butter or margarine
• 25 grams of cheese + extra for sprinkling on top, grated (I used cheddar today)
• 1 egg, the smallest in the box
• 1-2 teaspoons dried oregano

Method:

1. Add the flour, salt and butter into a mixing bowl and combine the ingredients until the mixture is “like breadcrumbs” – I use soft margarine, so this can be done simply by using a fork (so no mucky hands!)
2. Mix the cheese into the flour/butter.
3. Whisk the egg and mix it in with the cheese/flour/butter mixture.  The original recipe I used was double the flour/butter and used 1 egg, so you can use half an egg if you wish … to keep things simple I just usually use the whole smallest egg in the box.  Bring this together until it’s a sticky dough – if you need more liquid, add 1-2 tablespoons cold water (or milk) and give it a little kneading in the bowl.
4. Remove the dough from the bowl onto a floured surface and form the dough into a round (or square) and flatten it out to about ½” thick.  At this point you can cut out individual scones, or simply cut the dough into wedges or squares.
5. Top the dough with the oregano and a little grated cheese
6. Place the dough on a microwave safe sheet, or in a microwave bowl – do not cover the scone dough.  Microwave on high power (800 watts) for 2½ minutes!

That’s it – you now have little edible microwave cheese scones – but you might wish to brown them under the grill.  I rarely bother to do this.

Easily Scale the Recipe Up:

You’ll notice that I’ve mentioned that the recipe only really “needs” ½ an egg, but I’ll typically throw in a whole egg – so to scale the recipe up, just add half as much again of all the other ingredients without any extra egg, or even as much as double the rest of the ingredients.  It’s really flexible and forgiving.

Menu Cost – 35p: 

At their cheapest, these quick microwave cheese scones will cost a total of about 35p to make about six scones or wedges. 3p of flour, 8p for an egg, 15p for the cheese, 4p for the margarine, so round the price up to 35p just to make it easy.  6p/scone.