My popular favorite, moist, delicious Scone Recipe.

This is sincerely the greatest scone recipe I have tried. In fact, I had never really had a scone until I made these. Sure, in sheer desperation I have regrettably purchased scones from coffee shops here and there... and lived to tell the tale. But one day I came across this particular recipe on the Joy of Baking website and thought it looked so simple, why not give it a try.

The original recipe is for chocolate chip scones, and they are delicious. However, I have spent months playing around with other flavor combinations and learned some neat tricks along the way and I am finally ready to share my Yummy Scone Recipe!

Some tips before you begin:

·      Have all your ingredients and tools out and ready.

·      Using a baking sheet to pour all your ingredients over so you don’t make a mess on the counter.

·      Your butter must be cold cold cold! Frozen even.

·      When measuring flour, pour the flour into the measuring cup then scrape off the excess with a flat edge. Do not scoop out your flour from the bag using the measuring cup.

·      If you do not have buttermilk, put a tablespoon (or two) of vinegar in a measuring cup and fill the rest of the way with milk or half & half. Allow it to sit for a few minutes. Voila! Buttermilk.

 Flavor choices.
There are numerous choices you can make and experiment with. Here are a few tried and true combinations:
Dried Blueberry / Chopped pecans / lemon or vanilla extract
Dried cherries / slivered almonds / almond extract
Dried cranberries / chocolate or white chocolate chips / vanilla extract
Raisins / 1 tsp of cinnamon / vanilla extract
Dried peaches / 1 tsp cardamom / lemon extract

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour.

¼ cup granulated white sugar

1 ¼ teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted cold butter

A total of 1 cup nuts and/or dried fruit

1 teaspoon extract

2/3 – ¾ cup buttermilk

1 egg

Turbinado or raw sugar for topping

Let's got all our ingredients:

Imagine a big block of butter in here too. Woops.

Let's get all our tools:

Preheat your oven:

Prepare your pan with a spray of cooking spray and parchment paper.

Also, put a handful of flour on your pan for later.

Not sure why the color looks so strange.

Measure 1/2 cup dried fruit into a small bowl and cover it with water. Allow it to sit until you are ready for it. These are dried cherries and blueberries. I'm making cherry/almond and blueberry/pecan.

In large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. 

Remember, when measuring your flour, pour it from the bag into the measuring cup then scrape off the excess with a flat edge.

  

 Once you have all your dry ingredients, now comes the butter. It better be cold, COLD, I tell you! Frozen, even. I recently learned the greatest trick evah regarding getting the cold butter in small enough mixable pieces for the scones. There is a great food blogger named Brown Eyed Baker and she shared this trick for making perfect pie crust. I knew instantly that it would work for my scones and I can't tell you how happy I was!


Ready? Ready????


A Cheese Grater!!!!!!

Ta Daaaaaaa!!!!!!!!
Here's what I do. First, I buy large blocks of butter because I go through tons of it. You do know you can freeze butter, right? Don't be afraid to buy it in bulk just because you think you won't go through it all. Freeze that buttah!


Since the recipe calls for one stick of butter and one stick of butter equals 1/4 cup, I remove the paper to where the 1/4 cup line is, or somewhat close.

Then, grate!

 And look at this magic pile of slivered cold butter that comes forth!

 I'm telling you, it's almost too much!

 Put the butter in the bowl with the dry ingredients. Using your clean hands, smash the butter between your fingers, mixing it with the flour until it is all incorporated and looks like coarse crumbles.

See? Coarse crumbles.

Now we are going to measure 1/2 cup of slivered almonds. Oh, forgot to mention, this recipe is one of my favorites: Cherry Almond. I messed up above and used vanilla instead of almond extract. Boo hoo! S'ok. They are still amazing.

Now, drain the cherries that have been soaking in water. 

HINT: when using dried fruit in scones, the fruit cannot be larger than a blueberry or it will be too big and make the scone fall apart. So take a large knife and just chop through the fruit a few times. No need to mince it, just a good chop.

Here we have added the almonds and cherries to the dry ingredients.

Now pour in the buttermilk/extract mixture.

I like to take a big wooden spoon and swirl it around the edge a few times before I dig in with my clean hands to mix everything completely. Your hands are often the greatest tool!

Mix until dough just comes together. Then transfer the dough the floured surface on the prepared baking pan.

Shape the dough into a inch and a half thick wheel shape.

(I'm gonna stop right here and say I am so tired of Europeans making fun of how Americans do scones. So we like to add all kinds of nuts and fruit!? So we like them in a cone shape?! What of it! Are we constantly making fun of the fact that you have such little interest in dental hygiene???? Oh wait...)

Anyway, at this point I crack an egg and whisk it around a little. Using a pastry brush brush the entire top of the scone wheel with egg.

Then sprinkle with tons however much Turbinado or raw sugar you like. Or not, maybe you are European and rolling around in disgust at all the sugar this American puts in her pastry. That's OK. I can out-sugar you any day.

Taking a large knife, cut across the wheel a total of 4 times. Like a pizza! So you end up with eight separate scones.

Carefully pull them apart and distance each scone from one another. Scones do not play nice with each other.

 Slide into the oven. Set the timer for 16 minutes then turn the entire pan and add another 2 minutes to the timer.

 Voila! Moist, American Scones! (tee hee) 


You can easily make a double batch of scones, place them on two separate pans, bake one right away and cover the other with plastic wrap. This pan can remain in the fridge for up to three days. Imagine, fresh baked scones during the week!