Scones 1-2-3-4
With this simple formula, you can make scones anytime, anywhere.
I’m a fan of master recipes—recipe formulas that allow the home cook to improvise once the basic concept is mastered. For decades, I’ve used a master recipe for biscuits, but I’ve always wondered about scones. Some are huge, some are small; some are rich, some are lean; some are moist, others dry. So, if I could come up with my version of the perfect scone, I could turn it into a simple formula so I could make them anytime, anywhere.
Here is the formula: 1 cup of heavy cream, 1 cup dried fruit, and 1 egg; 2 cups flour and 2 teaspoons baking powder; 3 tablespoons sugar, and 4 tablespoons cold butter. Plus add a pinch of salt. Simple enough.
This produces my ideal scone—it has to walk a fine line between being rich and being lean; just enough richness without being so rich that the addition of butter or jam would be coals to Newcastle. And the recipe had to be easy and quick to prepare.
As for the dried fruit, you can switch it out for fresh blueberries or raspberries. Or ditch the fruit and add a cup of toasted and chopped pecans or walnuts. If spices excite you, add some ground cinnamon, cardamom or ginger to the dry ingredients. If you find citrus scintillating, stir some grated lemon or orange zest into the wet ingredients.
Make sure the cream and egg are cold; this will help keep the dough cool and workable. If your oven has a convection function, this is a good time to use it. Ignore advice to reduce the temperature by 25°F if using convection. Keep it at 425°F, but shorten the baking time to 12 to 14 minutes. The recipe calls for chilling the scones for 15 minutes or so but you can heat the oven at the start of the recipe and then throw the scones into the oven when ready if you do not wish to wait - better chilled but still great without that resting time.
Now scones are as easy to throw together as the morning biscuits and they beat a bowl of Rice Krispies to start your day. A bowl of cereal does not go well with a cup of coffee!
Get the recipe for 1-2-3-4 Scones at the bottom of this newsletter.
Brown Sugar Cement
I was making a Brazilian Banana Cake over the weekend and discovered that my brown sugar was as hard as concrete. A simple solution—an old one—is to stuff a slice of bread into the container with the hardened sugar and, believe it or not, this works. (It takes a few hours however.) The plastic containers with the built in ceramic discs also work, but you have to remember to soak that disc in water every once in a while to keep things fresh.
Two Sheets of Parchment Instead of One
When developing my recipe for Whole Grain Soda Bread that I published on Substack last Saturday, I found that using two sheets of parchment instead of one helped solve the problem of burnt or overly browned bottom surfaces. Try it the next time you are baking quick breads such as biscuits, scones or soda bread. It really works.
Creaming Cold Butter
Most recipes suggest that butter be room-temperature before creaming with sugar for, say, a cake. Since many of us do not think ahead, we are stuck with cold butter. The solution is to cut the butter into small pieces and just give it extra time in the stand mixer. It will eventually warm up. This also works when reverse creaming butter and flour for a cake. Time is on your side.
David Lebovitz’s Great Book of Chocolate
David is a real pro and earned his chops as the pastry chef at Chez Panisse back in the 1980s. He just came out with a new cookbook on chocolate, which I highly recommend. His recipe for caramel-chocolate mousse has been one of my go-to recipes for years.
1-2-3-4 Scones
Ingredients:
1 cup cold heavy cream, plus 1 tablespoon, divided
1 large egg, cold
2 cups (260 grams) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
2 teaspoons baking powder
