Scones, the good and the bad (mostly the bad), and a recipe from the Joy of Cooking
Scones, the delicately delicious breakfast bread, may be surprisingly simple to whip up but most often are a dry crumbly and mediocre disappointment in the commercial bakery world. Despite hundreds of recipes, each with its own formula of ingredients and additions, there are very few that successfully deliver the tender and moist high notes that make for a great scone.
The most prominent warning sign of a bad scone recipe is an overly fussy ingredient list. Butter, buttermilk, milk, eggs, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, maple, honey. There are dozens of ingredients that you might find on the ingredient list of a scone recipe. Beware of recipes with more than six ingredients. Scones are a simple food and should be prepared with as few ingredients as possible. One of the lightest and richest variations to be found is the cream scone recipe from the Joy of Cooking. There are only four main ingredients in the recipe. Cream is the magical ingredient that provides consistently moist, flaky and tender results. Add lemon zest, dried fruit, vanilla or almond extract to mix things up.
Serve cream scones with Beth’s Farm Kitchen’s fruit jams and jellies, honey from Ray Tousey, and crème fraiche from Ronny Brook Dairy. If you are looking for local flour try Wild Hive Farm, or the Honest Weight Food Co-op who stocks locally grown and milled flour from the Champlain Milling Corporation.
Scone photos by Amy Halloran and Ellie Markovitch
Cream Scones
By Published: November 10, 2014
- Yield: 8-12 Servings
- Prep: 10 mins
- Cook: 15 mins
- Ready In: 25 mins
A light and tender scone recipe from the Joy of Cooking that is incredibly easy to make. Heavy cream provides the fat and liquid in this simplest of all scone recipes
Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
- 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
Instructions
- Combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and flour in a large bowl.
- Add the cream and stir until a shaggy mass forms (handle the dough as little as possible).
- Form a disk with the dough and roll it on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of 3/4 inch.
- Cut into diamonds (8-12), brush the tops with cream and sprinkle with sugar.
- Bake in 350 degree oven for 10-15 minutes until golden.