Scones that refuse to rise

Oh dear, we had another baking day yesterday, I say we, in fact it was the other half, me being snugly tucked up in bed for an afternoon siesta. Common perception would have us believe that baking is a scientific endeavour, follow the rules, and everything should turn out perfectly. Give her a recipe for cakes, biscuits, pancakes, or even cheesecake and this girl rocks. But when it comes to scones, well without being too rude, its safe to say she's just never, ever, ever managed to bake a good batch of scones. Mine are always perfect, hers are somewhat less than perfect.

In desperation, rather than bake them from scratch, she even bought a packet mix from the supermarket. The instructions said just add water. Very scientific, add the water, mix it all together, stick em on a baking tray, shove em in the oven and wait ten minutes. [Pauses for dramatic effect] Hmmm, well that didn't work quite like we expected.

Scones are supposed to be light and airy, with a lovely slightly sweet taste and just a hint of saltiness. Eat them hot with unsalted butter and paradise has just found you. Unfortunately, the scones you see in the picture were, um, well horrible comes to mind. They didn't rise so using them as a deadly weapon seems possible, the insides were barely cooked, and the taste, yurk, disgustingly sharp like sodium bicarbonate in a glass of water. After taking this picture we agreed that she takes better photos than me, and I bake better scones (I took this picture and you can see its not very good).