Tag Archives: scone

Dill Cheddar Scones

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I really feel like if you serve soup for dinner, you need some sort of homemade bread or muffin to go along with it.  I have pretty much eaten my weight in goat cheese biscuits this winter, so when I made potato soup tonight, I decided to revisit these savory scones to go along with them.  Having made the recipe before, I knew that it yielded way more scones than I needed so I figured I’d half the recipe.  Unfortunately, I’m quite poor at math, so I split the whole recipe in half up until the end, when I added a whole cup of cream instead of a half cup, so, obviously, I ended up making the whole recipe of them.  The one I posted here makes about 12 medium-sized scones, a good amount to serve with dinner.  Like all scones, what keeps the flakiness intact is streaks of unincorporated butter.  Be mindful about that as you mix, especially if you use a stand mixer.

Scones

Dill Cheddar Scones

2 cups flour, plus a few tablespoons for assembling

1 T baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 sticks butter (12 tablespoons)

2 eggs

1/2 cup heavy cream

4 oz. cheddar cheese

handful of fresh dill

1. Preheat your oven to 400.  Using either a large bowl or mixer, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Cut the butter into small, centimeter-sized pieces and toss them in.  Mix briefly until the pieces of butter have broken up a bit.  Add the eggs and cream and mix until just incorporated.

2. Grate the cheese and chop up the dill, fold both into the dough.  Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and mold into a big rectangle, roughly an inch tall.  Using a bench scraper or  chef’s knife, cut triangles off and transfer to a baking sheet (I do 3-4″ hypotenuse triangles).

3. Bake for 16-18 minutes, until the tops begin to brown.

Adapted from Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa

Grapefruit Scones

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It’s always a surprise to me that winter brings grapefruit.  Grapefruit seems like such a summery fruit – light, citrusy, pink – so it’s a true delight that it’s at it’s best in January when not much else is.  I got a little overzealous in my grapefruit purchasing a few weeks ago and ended up with a few spares, so I tried putting them into a scone and the results were fabulous.  You don’t get an oppressive amount of grapefruit flavor, but enough to know it’s there.  As with all scones, I prefer a much smaller scone than is typically considered a serving size, so I cut mine into triangles that have about a 3″ hypotenuse.  Sometimes I just form the dough into a disc and cut it like a pizza after baking – either way, you’ll get about 15 small scones.

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Grapefruit Scones

1/2 large grapefruit

2 cups flour

1 T baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/3 cup sugar (more if your grapefruit is bitter)

5T butter

1/2 cup cream (I used half&half)

1/4 cup yogurt

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Peel the grapefruit and remove the pith from grapefruit segments.  Stir the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a mixing bowl.  Cut the butter into 1/2″ pieces and cut the butter into the flour mixture using either a pastry cutter or a fork.  The idea is to break the butter into small pieces, not to incorporate it entirely.

2. Add the cream and yogurt to the dough and stir with a spoon until the flour is incorporated.  Fold in the grapefruit chunks – they will break up as you stir them and provide a little more liquid.  Taste to make sure there’s enough sugar to offset the tart of the grapefruit.

3. Form the dough into a disc about 1″ high and place in the center of a baking sheet.  Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.  After allowing the giant scone to cool for a few minutes, transfer to a cutting board and slice like a pizza.

Pumpkin Scones

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I have a confession to make: I don’t really like pumpkin spice lattes.  It’s tough because I live in North Texas and when the PSL is released (in what, July?) it’s still about 85 degrees outside and it doesn’t seem very seasonal to order an iced pumpkin spice latte.  Instead, I’d rather sip some iced coffee from home and enjoy my breakfast pumpkin in the form of a scone.  These scones have a very autumnal vibe and are incredibly easy to make.  They require a few specialty ingredients, namely a can of pumpkin.  I do find that sometimes scones are too dry, too massive, and have a huge slab of icing on top – not the case here, these are moist, normally sized, and have a nice glaze.  Pumpkin season is ending, so get one last great breakfast in before it’s smoothie season.

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Pumpkin Scones

yield: 12 small scones

2 1/2 cups flour

1 T baking powder

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1/4 tsp ground cloves

4 T cold butter

1/4 cup heavy cream

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

2/3 cup pumpkin puree

For the maple glaze:

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/2 tsp maple extract

2 T heavy cream

1. Preheat the oven to 350.

2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and spices in a medium sized bowl.  Cut the butter into small pieces and cut into the dry ingredients (I used a fork, but you could also use a pastry cutter or your hands) and break the butter up into very small pieces.

3. Combine the wet ingredients in a small bowl and fold into the flour mixture.  Don’t over mix the dough, just use a spatula to blend the ingredients until they form a soft, but sticky dough.  Turn the dough out onto a sheet of parchment paper and use your hands to make a rectangle.  Using a knife, cut small triangles of dough and separate them onto the parchment paper a few inches apart.  Put your parchment paper on a cookie sheet and bake until the scones are firm, but still soft inside, 12-15 minutes (I tap the top to make sure there’s still some give).

4. Whisk the powdered sugar, maple extract, and cream together to make the glaze.  Once the scones are cooled, dip the top of the scones into the glaze.

Source: adapted from Our Best Bites

Cost-Benefit Analysis:

This recipe has 3 integral specialty ingredients: pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice, and maple extract.  If you don’t put cream in your coffee, you may need to purchase that as well.

1. A can of pumpkin cost $1.79 – it’s nonnegotiable in this recipe.  Fortunately, you use about a half a can in this recipe, which leaves you plenty of pumpkin to make pumpkin snickerdoodles in the same week.  You could also put pumpkin in a smoothie (with some yogurt, banana, and some spices) or feed it to little ones if you have them.  I put plastic wrap over the can and store it in the fridge for a few days.

2. Pumpkin pie spice cost $5.49, which is a lot for a small container.  It would probably cost much less if you were buying it in, say, April, but I’ve never really wanted a pumpkin scone in April.  If you have PPS, use it!  If not, it’s really easy to make your own with spices that you probably already have.  To make it easy, PPS is essentially 1 part ginger, allspice, and nutmeg to 3 parts cinnamon (so 1 T cinnamon, and a teaspoon of ginger, allspice, and nutmeg).  If you’re planning to make a lot of pumpkin baked goods, scale it up and store it in an old spice container, if you’re just using it for these scones, I would increase the cinnamon to 1 1/2 tsp and then use 1/2 tsp of ginger, allspice, and nutmeg.

3. The maple extract cost $3.59.  I really love the taste of maple extract and I use it in frostings and glazes enough to make it worth the cost, but if you don’t want to buy it, you could easily substitute 2-3T of maple syrup and get the same effect.

4. I put whipping cream in my coffee, so I always have it on hand.  If you don’t, you could certainly substitute half and half or even whole milk, but it will give you a runnier glaze.  If I were not a cream lover, I’d buy a small container, use it for this recipe, and then plan on making a pasta with cream sauce pretty soon.  Cream stays fresh in the fridge for quite a while before it goes bad, so you don’t need to use it immediately.