Strawberry Scones

There are some things to know before you jump into making these strawberry scones. First, the foundation of a great scone is a good recipe and cold ingredients. The cold ingredients will make the dough much easier to work with. Second, let your scones bake long enough, really keep an eye on things. For the scone style you see here, you don’t want pale. Much of the flavor happens as the sugars, and butter, and edges of each scone brown. Lastly, scones made with fresh fruit are best warm from the oven. Bake just before you want to enjoy them whenever possible. Or do a quick reheat.

Strawberry Scones: The Ingredients

A few words about the ingredients I use here and why.

• Flours: Most scone recipes use all-purpose flour exclusively. But I find that adding a percentage of whole wheat flour can really anchor a scone and bring flavor dimension. Don’t worry, you won’t run into the all-too-common hippie, whole wheat dryness we all know and loathe with these. But the whole wheat flour really lends some rustic farmhouse vibes in the best way possible. Now when I go back to tasting more conventional scones, they end up tasting too one-dimensional to me.
• Sugar: I’ve baked these scones with a rotating cast of sugars over the years. Different amounts, different types. I feel like this recipe needs the sharp edge of white sugar to balance the other ingredients in these scones – for example, the tangy buttermilk or sour cream. Just sweet enough is what I was after here, and for whatever reason the brown sugar tend to get lost. And a blend didn’t do the job either.
  
• Other: I use quite a bit less baking powder and baking soda than other scone recipes. You don’t really need more than the amount in this recipe, and the buttermilk neutralizes any residual off flavor from the leavening agents.

Variations:

The recipe below is for classic strawberry scones with a bit of zest. Aside from the zest, they’re straight-forward, direct, a good scone foundation. That said, I often switch them up with one or two of the following:

• citrus: zest of one lemon  or lime (mix into wet ingredients)
• rosemary: I love the combination of strawberry and rosemary. Finely chop 2 five-inch sprigs of rosemary – 1 1/2 teaspoons or so. (Add to dry ingredients)
• black pepper: black pepper and strawberry are a classic combination. Add scant 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper to dry ingredients. Adjust with more in future batches if you love it.
• poppy seeds: add 1/3 cup to dry ingredients.
• toasted almonds: be sure they’ve cooled completely. (Add to dry ingredients)
• crystalized ginger: adds jolts of chewy ginger sugar. Chop it small and add it along with the wet ingredients.
• icing: lot of people like an iced drizzle over their scones. If you would rather have a drizzle top, here’s the plan. Use lemon zest in place of the orange zest called for in the recipe. Skip the sugar sprinkle, but do the egg wash. Allow scones to cool completely after baking, and use the salted lemon glaze from this glazed lemon cake recipe. Or do half and half so you can enjoy the sugar-topped scones warm.

Making Strawberry Scones By Hand

The recipe below assumes you have an electric mixer with a paddle attachment, but making them by hand is also possible and will save you some dishes! To make these scones by hand, watch the above video and reference these instructions:

1. Mix the dry ingredients well and then turn out into a pile on your counter top. Sprinkle the cold butter across the flour mixture and use your hands to rub the butter into the flour until it is evenly distributed throughout. You can use a dough scraper (or pastry cutter) to chop through the pile a bit and break up any butter lumps. You want the mixture to be sandy, with tiny pebbles.
2. Shape: Wrangle the flour mixture back into a pile with a dough scraper and make a well in the middle (the way you do when making homemade pasta). Pour the wet ingredients into the well and use your dough scraper to fold and mix the flour into the wet ingredients. Keep going until there is no dry flour left and a dough has started to form. At this point sprinkle the berries across the top, and fold them into the mixture as well.
   
3. Gather the dough into a ball and proceed with the recipe as written – slicing the dough into wedges and so forth.

More Scone Recipes

More Strawberry Recipes

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