I love to bake. My family loves to eat. We have a perfect symbiotic relationship.
One of our favorite things to indulge in is the basic buttermilk scone. They’re crisp on the outside, tender on the inside and just slightly sweet – the perfect foil for homemade jam and mock Devonshire cream. If you haven’t had a scone lately, you don’t know what you’re missing.
The beautiful thing about this recipe is that you can make simple alterations that give you a completely different end product. Craving something sweeter than a scone with jam and clotted cream? All you need to do is add some berries and white chocolate chips to this basic recipe and voila’ – you’ve got a scone that’ll knock your socks off.
What? You don’t want your socks knocked off? That’s okay. Just feed them to your family. The scones…not the socks! They’ll love you for it!
Triple Berry White-Chocolate Scones
The first thing you want to do is to pull out your food processor and fit it with the metal blade. Put your flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into the processor bowl and pulse it on & off for about 5 seconds. Cut the butter into slices and scatter them over the dry ingredients. Pulse the mixture for about 15-20 seconds until the butter is cut into very small pieces and the dry stuff now resembles course crumbs. If you don’t have a food processor, you can do the same job with a pasty cutter or two butter knives. Take your processor bowl off it’s base and dump the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl.
Now add the white chocolate chips to this dry mixture –
Dump the berries right on top of the mound. You don’t want to add the berries when they’re still hard as rocks, so place the frozen berries in a colander and run them under hot water to thaw them ever so slightly. Shake off the excess water.
I’m using a frozen Triple Berry Blend that I purchased at Sam’s Club. It’s a combo of raspberries, blueberries and blackberries.Yum!
The last thing to add is the buttermilk. Just pour it in and grab yourself a dinner fork.
A dinner fork?
Yes…a dinner fork, but it’ll be used for tossing, not eating!
Here’s the really important part. You DO NOT want to stir the mixture. If you do, you’ll end up with tough scones and mashed berries. Instead, you need to toss the mixture with the fork, pulling the dry ingredients from the bottom towards the surface.
Continue tossing with the fork until you can no longer see any patches of dry ingredients.
The berries will give off moisture, so you shouldn’t need to add more buttermilk. However, if you’ve used fresh berries and the mixture is still too dry, you can add more buttermilk, 1 tablespoon at a time, until the particles stick together.
You’ll have a rather tattered looking dough at this time. When it’s combined adequately, the mixture should look like this.
Now, take your mixing bowl and gently dump the ingredients onto a lightly floured surface. Pull the lumps together to make one large clump of dough and knead gently, 5 or 6 times, until the clump has formed a cohesive ball. I don’t know how else to describe it.
A photo sure would have come in handy. Sorry!
Gently pat the dough into a 6-7″ circle. Using a large butcher knife, cut the circle of dough into 8 wedges.
Place the wedges onto a parchment covered baking sheet. Make sure to leave room between the scones for rising during baking.
You can see that some of the raspberries have broken apart, giving the dough a pinkish cast. Don’t worry about this…the color will fade once they’re baked.
Brush the surface of the scones with your egg wash and place them in the oven. Bake until deep, golden brown.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before serving.
Confession – we never wait. We eat them hot out of the oven. But be forewarned – you do this at your own risk.
Upon removal from the oven, the white chocolate chips are like hot lava and can burn you. Badly.
I know. My lip still has the scar to prove it.
Not a pleasant experience!
But what IS a pleasant experience, is biting into the deliciousness of this Triple Berry White-Chocolate Scone paired with a cup of hot English tea or a frothy latte’.
Juan Valdez thanks you!
Basic Buttermilk Scones
Original version from If Teacups Could Talk by Emilie Barnes
2 cups flour
3 T. white sugar
1 T. baking powder
½ t. salt
6 T. butter, chilled
½ cup buttermilk
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1 egg, beaten well (for wash)
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Put the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in the bowl of a food processor with metal blade attached. Pulse off and on to combine ingredients. Using a knife, cut butter into ½” slices; scatter over the top of the flour mixture. Pulse processor off and on until butter has been cut into small pieces and mixture resembles coarse crumbs – about 15-20 seconds. If no processor is available, cut the mixture by hand with a pasty cutter. Pour this dry stuff into a medium-sized mixing bowl.
Add buttermilk and using a fork, toss the ingredients together until no dry patches of flour are visible. DO NOT stir the mixture or your scones will be tough. If mixture is too dry, you may add more buttermilk, 1 tablespoon at a time, until all dry patches of flour are gone.
Dump the contents of your mixing bowl onto a lightly floured surface and form into a ball. Gently knead a few times to make it cohesive. Pat gently into a 6-7” circle. With a sharp knife, cut into 8 wedges. Transfer wedges unto a parchment-covered baking sheet; leave about 1″ of space between wedges. Brush wedges with egg wash.
Bake in 425 degree oven for 19-21 minutes or until deep golden brown. Remove from oven and enjoy while warm with jam and Devonshire cream.
Tasty variations:
Triple Berry White-Chocolate Scones Add ¾ cup premium white-chocolate chips and 1 cup fresh or frozen (slightly thawed) triple berry blend to the mixing bowl, along with your buttermilk. The berries will release moisture, so be sure not to add more than ½ cup buttermilk or scone dough will be very soft and hard to handle. Proceed as above.
Raspberry-White Chocolate Scones
Add ¾ cup premium white-chocolate chips and 1 cup fresh or frozen (slightly thawed) raspberries to the mixing bowl, along with your buttermilk. The raspberries will release moisture, so be sure not to add more than ½ cup buttermilk or scone dough will be very soft and hard to handle. Proceed as above.
Blueberry Lemon Scones w/ Lemon Glaze
Add 2 teaspoons grated lemon peel and 1 cup fresh or frozen (slightly thawed) blueberries to the mixing bowl, along with the buttermilk. Proceed as above.
For glaze: mix 1 cup powdered sugar and enough fresh lemon juice to make a glaze of spreading consistency. After scones come out of oven, allow them to cool for 5 minutes, then spread or drizzle glaze over the tops of scones.
Other variations:
Apple Cinnamon-Raisin Scones
Cranberry Orange Scones
Banana Toffee Scones
This Life of Wander 