At school we often have to prepare breakfast, catering for teachers when they come for professional learning (PL). My students and I try our best to have a spread of freshly baked items along with fruits, yogurt, and coffee (of course!) upon their arrival. The baked goods include muffins, cookies, and Costco croissants that usually involve an embarrassing confession when someone asks if they was made in-house. Croissants made in-house? That’s the dream! But until we can afford a table-top sheeter, we will be working on madeleines, financiers, scones, and other items that are a little more practical to make in-house.

This recipe is a combination of Kenji López-Alt (of Serious Eats), Cook’s Illustrated, and Claridges. I’ve taken various elements of these recipes to make a simple, easy to duplicate process for the kiddies. Instead of rubbing butter into the flour that creates irregular layers, we have adopted Kenji’s method of creamed biscuits by adding enough fat to completely coat the flour, while using some buttermilk to react with the baking powder to create more carbon dioxide within the dough. The result of this is a tender fluffy scone.

Ingredients
292g all purpose flour (2 cups)
60g sugar (1/4 cup)
18g baking powder (1 1/2 tbsp)
3g salt (1/2 tsp)
48g (4 tbsp) butter, melted
137g buttermilk (1/2 cup)
197g heavy cream (3/4 cup)
84g raisin (1/2 cup) – optional

Instructions
1. Preheat oven at 425°F
2. In a bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
3. Stir in melted butter, then buttermilk and heavy cream.
4. Stir in inclusions, in this case raisins
5. Scoop 6 equal portions, using a yellow scoop (#20), onto a parchment-lined tray.
6. Repeat, scooping 6 more portions or for large scones add a second scoop of dough onto the first (2 scoops per scone).
7. Using water, wet hands, and flatten each scone slightly.
8. Brush tops with additional melted butter.
9. Bake for 18-20 minutes (in a standard home oven) for 6 large scones or 13-15 minutes for 12 smaller scones.
Note: If time permits, let the scones sit for 20-30 minutes before baking. This allows the buttermilk to react with the baking powder to produce and even fluffier scone.

Options for other flavours
We have tried doing lemon and raspberry, mixed berry, cheddar and green onion, … there are lots of possibilities here! Just the other day, Megan and I were thinking of making a scone with soaked raisins, almonds, and mixed peel; add some marizpan and we have a Scollen (Scone + Stollen, hehe).

For a vegan-friendly option, simply switch out white sugar for a palm or cane sugar, coconut oil for butter, and 1-1/4 cup of unsweetened almond milk for buttermilk and cream and add 1 tbsp of apple cider vinegar.

Here’s a video of the process.