Scones and Baking Powders

I baked scones for Sunday breakfast. The recipe in the cookbook used baking soda as one of the ingredients. I didn’t have baking soda and remembered that my husband once mentioned baking powder is made of baking soda and cream of tartar. So I modified the recipe to add extra baking powder. It was successful.
Then I wonder what is cream of tartar does. I had Joy of cooking 1975 edition to find out. No cream of tartar in Index. I decided to look for baking powder section. Yes. I learned something new about baking powders and baking soda. Probably good bakers know these facts.
This book included much chemistry of baking. I was ignorant in this field. Now I learned a bit from this book. There are 5 types of baking powders in this book, tartrate baking powders, phosphate baking powders, double acting or S.A.S (sodium aluminum sulfate). I learned two useful things from it. One is that if tartrate powder (tartric acid and/or cream of tartar) is used for baking, batter or dough need to be baked quickly and not kept in fridge or freezer. Another thing is when there were no baking powder, use mix ½ teaspoon cream of tartar, 1/3 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1/8 teaspoon of salt in exchange of one teaspoon of baking powder. This mix needs to be used quickly once it is mixed with liquid.

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Fumikob's Scones Recipe

Ingredients
3 ¼ cups of flour
2 teaspoons of cream of tartar
3 teaspoon of double acting baking powder
1 tsp salt
6 TBSP chilled butter
3 TBLSP sugar
1 Cup milk
(Chocolate chip or raisins, optional)
Cooking instructions
Preheat oven to 425 degree.
Combine first 4 dry ingredient and shift.
Add the dry mix above into food processor and mix
Cut butter into small pieces and add and process in the food processor.
Add sugar and milk and process to mix.
Take out the dough on the floured surface.
Add raisin or chocolate chip (optional)
Knead dough and ½ inch thick round
Cut 12 pie shape
Bake for 10 minutes