SUNDAY DESSERT #61: White Chocolate Cranberry Scones
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Scotland š“ó §ó ¢ó ³ó £ó “ó æ
DIFFICULTY LEVEL: Easy
INSPIRATION: Although originally Scottish, scones are also well-known throughout the UK, including Ireland. I wanted to make something Irish for the upcoming St. Patrick's Day. š
RECEPTION/COMMENTARY: Ahhh. The scone. Ever popular and always a great bakery option to pair with your morning hot drink of choice.
Have you ever had a really good scone? Like, perfectly crunchy exterior with the soft, cake-like interior? Lightly sweetened and buttery? Scones, done right, are a dream breakfast dessert.
The trick to making a perfect scone is not necessarily in the choice of recipe. Rather, the secret is to keep all of your ingredients COLD. Butter, especially, needs to stay solid and firm while baking so that when evaporation of liquids in the dough occurs, some chunks of butter stay solid. This is what gives pastries those nice, flaky, buttery layers. To achieve this in scones, it's good to freeze your butter first and then use a box grater to finely grate the butter before adding it to the dry ingredients. Then, chilling the scones before baking will also ensure the butter is firm for that fool-proof, science-backed, absolutely perfect scone texture that we all know and love.
Scones are also awesome because they are versatile! You can mix in any extracts and flavors, savory or sweet. My particular choice of a vanilla base scone with white chocolate and dried cranberries mixed in was pretty good! We gave it an 8/10.
WOULD I MAKE IT AGAIN? Abso-friggin-lutely! My inner science nerd needs to experiment with flavor combinations!
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