Pre-heat your oven to 200 C / Gas 6. Cover baking tray with greaseproof paper.

Sieve the flour into a large bowl. Add the sugar, salt and baking powder. Chop in the butter and then rub it into the flour, etc until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. (I’m going to think of a better way of putting that one day – something unique haha).

Core and peel your apple and then finely chop it. You want tiny pieces, no more than 5mm. Put it in a little bowl and sprinkle the cinnamon over it. Give it a stir so that the cinnamon covers the apple completely. Add it into the flour/butter mixture and stir it all together so that the flour has coated the apple. This stops any chance of the fruit sinking to the bottom of the scones. Add the sultanas and stir these in too.

Add half the milk to the flour/apple mixture and stir. A dough will start to form. Keep adding the milk getting your hand in to get that dough forming. You might not need all the milk, you don’t want the dough so sticky that you can’t work with it, but it just depends on the flour and how it absorbs. Basically you want a nice, soft, workable dough that isn’t a sticky, unmanageable mess.

Once it’s the right consistency knead it for about 5 minutes. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out to a thickness of about 2.5 cms. Using a 5cm diameter cutter cut out your scones. Don’t be tempted to twist your cutter, this affects them rising. Just push down, effectively stamping them out. Re-roll out any excess dough and stamp out as many as you can.

Transfer your scones to the baking tray and brush the top of each one with the beaten egg so that you get a nice golden brown glaze on the finished product.

Bake for 15 minutes. Any longer and they tend to go a bit dry – nobody wants that! Once out of the oven transfer to a wire rack to cool. Serve warm if you like, or cool in whatever way takes your fancy.

The scones keep in airtight container in cool cupboard for 2 to 3 days.