Hi! Welcome to my new baking blog! I hope to post once a week.

After having made a few batches of scones, each with different fillings, I’ve come to the conclusion that the recipe I use is very forgiving, in that even if you don’t quite get the exact amounts of certain ingredients, particularly with the dairy ingredients, or the dough seems really sticky and blob-like, or that you didn’t fold it in the right way, it still all comes together, beautifully, in the end.

The beauty of scones is that they do not have to have an exact shape. They are sort of blob-like in appearance. I made batches of scones substituting and interchanging different milk products–cottage cheese, yogurt, buttermilk, and sour cream, all with similar outcomes. For fillings, instead of cherries, I’ve made peach, blackberry, blueberry, and even bacon, where I even added some maple syrup for some of the dairy and slathered on some bacon grease on the tops, instead of melted butter, before sprinkling turbinado sugar.

You can also either make them oven ready and freeze them individually wrapped in plastic for baking at a later time, or just bake them at the same time that you make them. Up until this recipe, I had always just bought my scones, usually at a café or restaurant. And they always tasted really dense and heavy. These are a little more light and cake-like on the inside, and crispy and crunchy on the outside. I don’t think I will ever buy scones from someone again, unless they are freshly baked.

Cherry Scones

Ingredient list:

1 1/2 cups All-Purpose Flour
1/2 cup King Arthur’s White Whole Wheat Flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar, plus 1 tablespoon sugar
1 stick, or 4 ounces, unsalted butter, frozen
1/2 cup buttermilk
2/3 cup yogurt
about 1 cup pitted cherries, halved
*optional melted butter on top, followed by a sprinkling of turbinado sugar.

The Process:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Add the first six ingredients in a bowl, and whisk thoroughly to mix. Grate frozen butter into the flour mixture and gently, quickly mix with fingers to incorporate, until the butter is thoroughly mixed and coated with flour, like pie dough.

Add the buttermilk and yogurt and fold with spatula to form a dough. Sprinkle flour on a work surface and place dough on surface for folding.

You will need a fairly large surface, since you will be pressing the dough down with floured hands to form a square that’s about “12X12”. Fold the square in thirds, starting from the left or the right, so that one side is folded into the center, then the other side is folded over, to form a “4X12″ rectangle, with the 4 inch side closest to you on the counter. Fold the rectangle into thirds, starting from top and bottom.

After folding, you should have a 4″ by 4” square.

If dough is getting too difficult to work with, place in the freezer for 5-10 minutes.

Return dough to floured surface, and roll out dough into a 12-inch square again. Place your cherries spread evenly on the surface of the dough and press down cherries gently.

Roll dough, starting from the bottom, forming a rolled up dough. Use flour as needed to keep from dough sticking to surface or fingers. With seam side down, form or pat down dough to form a horizontal rectangle, about “4X12”.

Divide dough into four rectangle pieces, staring with halving the larger rectangle with a vertical cut, then halving those two parts.

With the four rectangles, cut each diagonally to form 8 triangles. At this point, you can flash freeze, then individually plastic wrap each scone for future baking, or you can bake them off.

Before baking, I melt a couple of tablespoons of butter and brush on top of each scone, followed by a sprinkling of turbinado sugar.

They take anywhere from 20-30 minutes, depending on whether baked from being frozen or not. I almost feel like the freezer ones are fuller and taste better, but they are probably about the same. Enjoy!