Wholemeal orange chocolate scones

These are largely inspired by Choclette's recent (well, fairly recent!) chocolate scones here. Rooting around in the fridge I discovered that I had yet another tub of half fat creme fraiche that needed to be used as soon as possible. See also here and here (will I never learn - apparently not given that I know there's another tub of the stuff in the fridge as I type). Since scones are often made with buttermilk, an acidic liquid, I reckoned that I could use my creme fraiche for the same purpose. I liked Choclette's idea of adding chocolate to scones and her idea of using partly wholemeal flour and I also found some candied peel in need of using so I created a recipe to suit my needs.

Wholemeal orange chocolate scones

Ingredients

150g self raising flour

150g wholemeal self raising flour

50g butter

35g caster sugar (plus extra demerara for sprinkling on the tops)

40g dark chocolate with candied orange peel, broken into tiny pieces

35g candied peel, snipped finely with scissors

200ml low fat creme fraiche (I used Yeo Valley) plus some water to slacken

Method

- Preheat the oven to gas 6 1/2/210 C. Line a baking tray with parchment.

- Mix the flours in a large bowl and rub in the butter. Mix in the sugar.

- Mix in the chopped peel and chocolate.

- Pour in the creme fraiche and a few tablespoons of water to get the creme fraiche to a more buttermilk like consistency. I'm afraid I just did this by eye and added a little more water until the dough felt a little sticky.

- Bring the dough together and tip onto a floured work surface. Pat out not too thinly and cut out your scones. I used a 2"/5cm cutter and got about 17.

- Dampen the surfaces of the scones with a little milk or water and sprinkle with demerara sugar.

- Bake for 18-20 minutes until lightly golden brown. Allow to cool on a wire rack.

Enjoy, preferably warm with butter.

The creme fraiche worked well enough in these, but to be honest, they weren't my favourite recent bake. I'm not sure why I'm not that enamoured of them, the scones were light and fluffy, if a little on the shallow side (my fault for patting out too thinly I think). I think that the chocolate and orange flavours didn't quite go with the wholemeal flour but I can't put my finger on quite why. My colleagues didn't seem to mind though, and these went quickly.

Edited to add: these are nice, it's just that they're not my favourite - lots of other people liked them....