By: Pam Anderson Copyright 2004 USA Weekend and columnist Pam Anderson. All rights reserved.
Make a holiday breakfast--or afternoon tea--really special with these sweet bakery treats.
Great for a Sunday morning reading the paper.........
Start by preheating the oven. Meanwhile, measure the dry ingredients into a bowl, add the butter, then your favorite dried fruit, and finally stir in the liquid ingredients. That's it. The dough's ready to shape.
* 2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/3 cup sugar
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, frozen
* 1/2 cup raisins (or dried currants)
* 1/2 cup sour cream
* 1 large egg
DIRECTIONS
1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a medium bowl, mix flour, 1/3 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Grate butter into flour mixture on the large holes of a box grater; use your fingers to work in butter (mixture should resemble coarse meal), then stir in raisins.
3. In a small bowl, whisk sour cream and egg until smooth.
4. Using a fork, stir sour cream mixture into flour mixture until large dough clumps form. Use your hands to press the dough against the bowl into a ball. (The dough will be sticky in places, and there may not seem to be enough liquid at first, but as you press, the dough will come together.)
5. Place on a lightly floured surface and pat into a 7- to 8-inch circle about 3/4-inch thick. Sprinkle with remaining 1 tsp. of sugar. Use a sharp knife to cut into 8 triangles; place on a cookie sheet (preferably lined with parchment paper), about 1 inch apart. Bake until golden, about 15 to 17 minutes. Cool for 5 minutes and serve warm or at room temperature.
FOOTNOTES
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Cranberry-Orange Scones
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Follow the recipe for Simple Scones, adding a generous teaspoon of finely grated orange rind (zest) to the dry ingredients and substituting dried cranberries for the raisins.
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Lemon-Blueberry Scones
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Follow the recipe for Simple Scones, adding a generous teaspoon of finely grated lemon rind (zest) to the dry ingredients and substituting dried blueberries for the raisins.
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Cherry-Almond Scones
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Follow the recipe for Simple Scones, adding 1/2 tsp. almond extract to the sour cream mixture and substituting dried cherries for the raisins.
Savory Scones: I used 1/6 cup sugar instead of 1/3 cup, and instead of any fruit, I added 1/4 cup of cooked and chopped bacon, 1/6 cup diced chives, and 1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese. Those scones were super yummy too!!
To Frost -
For the orange cranberry - I made a frosting from confectioners sugar, almond extract and Orange Juice.......drizzled over it.
NOTES FROM OTHERS-
Followed recipe exactly and flavored them with 2 t. orange zest and 1-2 t. orange juice. Brushed the tops with egg wash and sprinkled with sugar.
I brushed the tops with an egg wash and granulated sugar
I Recommend you bake these on PARCHMENT PAPER
We use dried cranberries and orange extract, and sometimes a bit of orange rind to flavor them, as most in my family are not fans of raisins. I have also changed out the cranberries for chocolate chips, which with the citrus flavor underneath is a nice and refreshing change! If you need a classic and adjustable scone recipe...this is it!!!
these are also fantastic with dried cherries and lime zest & chocolate chips and orange zest.
I made them as stated, except added a bit of almond extract and dried cherries that had been softened in water.
These came out very, very good. We love them. Ate these with the Pumpkin Butter
I had these scones with lemon curd, heavenly.
WOW! Used the food processor like another reviewer suggested. Used frozen butter, and cut into little chunks. Also made my circle and then put in the fridge for 10 minutes to set up... and make the butter hard again... and the tasty and buttery flavor was beautiful! Very light and airy... WOW - so good!!
Wonderful recipe, and so easy! I made one batch with poppyseeds and lemon, and another with dried cherries and dark chocolate chunks. My kids think I am the best baker ever
I've also added a 12oz can of pumpkin to them and made a thicker icing to top those (powder sugar, canned nonfat milk and a little cream cheese about 3 oz and just keep adding sugar and milk until you get the consistency you want)
FANTASTIC... I use a heavy dty Kitchen-Aide mixer and a scone pan. Husband cant get enough of them:)
I used cherry craisins and 1/2 t. almond extract. Would use more almond flavoring next time. Mine were a little dry at 15 minutes. Will have to keep a closer eye next time. definitely put raw sugar on top before baking.
This is definitely a keeper. Using frozen butter made these unbelievable flakey, with a nice, crisp crust. I found the easiest way to incorporate the frozen butter was to dice it with a knife, then put it in the food processor with 1 cup of the flour until the pieces were slightly larger than pea-sized. Then, I added the other dry ingredients and quickly gave them a whirl, before stirring in the wet ingredients. (I used fat-free sour cream). I made 2 batches, borrowing from ideas submitted by others. One batch had fresh blueberries, lemon zest, nutmeg, vanilla and lemon extract in the scones, with a powdered sugar/lemon zest/lemon extract/non-fat cream glaze. The other batch had cinnamon and vanilla in the scones, and a powdered sugar/creme brulee creamer/maple extract glaze. I topped that one with glazed pecans. Both kinds were a "wow" at a potluck. I look forward to trying other variations
EXCELLENT and easy. I used Almond flavoring and white chocolate chips! I think the almond flavoring made it.
I added t. cinnamon and t. vanilla to dough then drizzled glaze of conf. sugar, maple extract, van. extract, and milk on top. So cinnamon maples scones and wow...just like Starbuck's but better!!
I used the recipe for the cranberry/orange except used lemon zest (I didn't have an orange) and added 1 tsp vanilla as suggested by another reviewer. I also mixed them in my food processor. This made it sooooo easy! FYI - pulsed together dry ingred. then I cut the frozen butter into small chunks and pulsed, then added the sourcream/egg mixture, flavorings, and lastly fruit. It only took a few minutes and it was nicely mixed.
I wanted a lemon poppyseed scone so I made these in the food processor and added 1/2 teaspoon of lemon oil and 1 tablespoon of poppyseeds. Best scones I ever had!!
I did a Peach Cobbler variation by adding 1/2 tsp. of cinnamon & 1/4 tsp. nutmeg to the scone mixture plus a little extra sugar. I also added 1/2 tsp. vanilla to the sour cream mixture before combining all the ingredients. Also, Instead of making traditional scone triangles, i spread the mixture to cover the bottom of a 9" square cake pan, coated it w/ a thin layer of real butter & sprinkled w/ a cinnamon, nutmeg & sugar mixture, then baked it. When it was finished, i topped it w/ a peach cobbler topping & made some Devonshire cream to go with it. Absolutely Delish!! Works great as a peach cobbler without being gooey & runny.
This recipe was originally featured in the USA WEEKEND article Simply Perfect Scones on December 19, 2004.
Pam Anderson is the author of four cookbooks, including her latest, Perfect Recipes for Having People Over.
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Copyright 2006 USA WEEKEND and columnist Pam Anderson. All rights reserved.
There are several ways to incorporate butter into the dry ingredients for scones, biscuits or pie dough -- fingertips, a pastry cutter, two knives or forks, or the grating disk of a food processor. For a small batch of scones, I've found grating frozen butter on a box grater is much easier than any of those methods. For a larger batch, however, washing the food processor bowl may be preferable to hand-grating several sticks of butter.
Make sure the butter is frozen solid. Any softer and it will clog up the grater, clump together and not mix well with the dry ingredients; plus, the scones won't rise as high or be as flaky. Store some butter in the freezer so you don't have to wait for it to chill the next time you want to make scones (or biscuits or pie dough).
If you're short on time in the morning, mix and freeze the dry ingredients (with the incorporated butter) and refrigerate the egg-sour cream mixture the night before. The next morning, simply mix, form, cut and bake.
To keep the dough as cold as possible during mixing, stir it with a fork until clumps form. At that point, switch to your hand, pressing the clumps together and against the side of the bowl to form a ball. Because there's a minimum of liquid in the recipe (so the scones rise up, not out, as they bake), you may be tempted to add more, but don't. There should be enough liquid to bind the dough. If any crumbs linger, flick a few drops of water onto them and use the dough ball to pick them up.
No need for a rolling pin. Just pat the ball into a disk, sprinkle it with a little sugar for good looks, and cut it into wedges. You can double the recipe, but divide the dough in half to pat out and cut. Otherwise you'll end up with a big disk and long, skinny scones.
And make sure to adjust the oven rack to the lower-middle position -- not the bottom. The dough has enough sugar that close proximity to the heat could produce dark bottoms.
