Thursday, May 19, 2022

I've finally popped my scones cherry

My first time ever eating scones with clotted cream:

To be clear, I've eaten scones before—both good and bad (looking at you, Starbucks)—but never the proper way, i.e., with jam and clotted cream. Well, as I mentioned once before, the store downstairs in the building where I work is, bizarrely, selling jars of clotted cream. My Korean coworker got scones from the Kim Young Mo Bakery in his neighborhood. He tried to share them with me this past Tuesday, when I was fasting, and I had to turn down his offer. He went to the Kim Young Mo up the street today to try again, and in doing so, he confirmed my suspicion that every branch of Kim Young Mo is currently selling scones.

Starbucks (here's a pic of a copycat Starbucks scone) could learn a thing or two about making proper scones from Kim Young Mo, which is a high-quality bakery that generally does a very good job with Western breads* from all over, especially the French stuff like baguettes and croissants. Ideally, scones are crumbly and fugly-looking. Despite the difference in ingredients, scones should look a lot like American drop biscuits—lumpy and a bit trollish. They're unwieldy and, depending on how much clotted cream and jam you use, messy. This qualifies them as comfort food. Starbucks scones have that machine-made, sleek, assembly-line look, and they're not that flavorful, although the chain tries to amp up the flavor by adding bits of blueberries and other nonsense.

Having now eaten a Kim Young Mo scone, I hereby give it the Hominid Seal of Approval. Twas a good scone, properly made, and since my coworker gave me two more, I'll eat those tomorrow. I have to say, though, that clotted cream is something of an acquired taste. Not horrible, but I guess I'm so thoroughly American that I think I prefer good ol' butter.

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*That said, I'm not a fan of their Christmastime breads, the German Stollen and the Italian panettone. Finding good Stollen in Seoul has proven to be more difficult than expected. Kim Young Mo's panettone is just awful. I don't know what they're doing wrong. Maybe I need to try real, Italian-made panettone to see whether I like the original.

ADDENDUM: in the comments, Charles described the scone I ate as "smooth," but I'm not seeing it. Here's an uneaten scone:

If you look up scones on Google, you get these results. Really all that different? (Then again, I see a lot of "classic" scones have something like a Death Star trench running around their perimeters. Is that what makes them classic? I mean, if that's a major test for a valid scone [not sure I agree], then by that standard, Kim Young Mo Bakery has failed. I don't know; it could simply be that my standards for a good scone are far lower than Charles's.)



4 comments:

Charles said...

I've got to disagree about KYM's scones. They're not bad, mind you, and they're certainly better than Starbuck's. But I never saw a scone that looked like that when I was in the UK. They're too... smooth? It's hard to put my finger on it, especially since I don't have one in front of me. Taste-wise they are decent. But I do remember thinking, when I had one a couple of weeks ago, that I made better scones.

Kevin Kim said...

My Korean coworker described them as "really buttery," and I'm not sure he was being complimentary. I liked them just fine, but I admit I'm not a scone connoisseur.

Charles said...

Correction: I described the scone I ate as smooth. It was definitely smoother than that pic you posted. Quite weirdly so. But that pic still doesn't really look like what I'm used to.

I think the difference is at least partly in the fact that scones are generally cut (often with a circular cutter), so they rise in a certain way. In terms of the texture as well, it didn't strike me as quite right, although it's possible that had something to do with it possibly not being completely fresh.

I've definitely had worse scones, and I wouldn't say that KYM has necessarily "failed." There is, after all, a wide variety in what might be considered a "valid" scone. I just wasn't all that impressed by KYM's offering, that's all.

(Incidentally, buttered scones is very much a British thing as well, so if you're not a fan of the clotted cream, you can just butter them and still be "authentic.")

One of these days, you'll have to drop by our place for tea and I'll make you some homemade scones.

Kevin Kim said...

Bless me! Tea and scones!

I shall have to practice my pinky-twiddling, good sir.