I have recently discovered what is now my favorite, tried and true recipe for baking scones that I found on epicurious. Other recipes I have tried were too gooey which then resulted in uneven scones, and too often the bake time was not long enough. OK, I know. I should have just thrown the scones back in the oven, but you don’t necessarily know if they are going to be the right and proper moisture level until after you take them out. However, it may have had to do with the fact that after they cooled, I would immediately put them in a Tupperware container for storage. Meh.
Regardless, I recently made scones. Normally I like making cranberry scones as dried cranberries are easy to work with (they are not delicate like raspberries for instance). I have been known to add orange juice, orange zest or both, and one time I made white chocolate-cranberry scones. All were awesome. But, as you known, it’s summer. Summer is blueberry time and blueberries are delicate, but I didn’t care. At $2/pint I decided to experiment.
First, warm up that oven to 400F. I like to get all of my ingredients out on the counter so I’m not wasting a lot of time grabbing things, or getting dough and/or flour on my cabinet handles.
The blueberries looked a lot better than this picture made them out to be. But the point is you will need this stuff to make the best 8 scones of your life:
3 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 cup chilled buttermilk
I use this recipe no matter what flavor of scone I want. The original recipe was for cranberry-orange scones and thus has specific measurements for how many cups of cranberries to add as well as how much orange zest. Do what you want, but start by mixing small amounts before dumping too much in. For these blueberry-cranberry scones, I added a pint of blueberries and a handful or two of dried cranberries. I wanted to add the cranberries to give the finished product more texture, as the delicate blueberries were obviously not going to withstand the mixing paddle, and I was not going to mix these ingredients by hand, much less as well as they would need.
I mixed all of the dry ingredients together first before I added the cubed butter. Once it got mealy looking, I added the blueberries little-by-little until the pint was gone. I kept it on the “stir” setting at first so as to not make the berries completely explode right away. As they worked they way in, I threw in those two handfuls of cranberries.
After adding the milk, the mixture got pretty goopy, so I added large spoonfuls of flour to offset the affect, knowing that in mere minutes, I would be kneading the dough on the counter. I added maybe 2-3 large spoonfuls before it looked good enough to hit the counter. It was still gooey so I added another 2-3 handfuls of flour to coat it so I could work with it, knead it and roll it around without making too much of a mess. And I did.
After I formed the mixture into a thick disk – probably about an inch thick, if not a little more – I cut it into eight servings and put it an already lined cookie sheet. I also like to sprinkle some granulated sugar on about half of the scones I make. Not only because it looks pretty, but it tastes excellent.
The recipe says to throw the scones in the oven for about 25 minutes. I kept them in there about 30, as each oven is different, but just checked on them once or twice to ensure that they would be a nice golden brown.
Scones are super easy to make, and actually quite fun. Nothing tastes better than a warm scone, a hot cup of coffee and the paper. Don’t waste money buying old nasty ones at the coffee shop, get some fresh or dried fruit, and have at it!
sweet i love blueberries but they are spendy i well have to try this