A Perfect Scone

As we all know, I love brunch—especially when that brunch involves a waitress bringing me eggs Benedict and mimosas. But, I have been known to love a potluck brunch at a friend’s house or to even host a brunch or two myself.

As much as I’d like to say that when I host brunch I make eggs Benny for everyone and the hollandaise sauce comes out perfectly, I am a mostly honest person. I do a lot of make-ahead recipes. And, this one that I found on epicrack is probably the best of the bunch. Quick to make the night before, easily portable, and generally a winner across generations (read as kids love ’em and they won’t bother the denture wearing set).

Chocolate Chip Scones

Makes 6 ridiculously large scones

• 2 C unbleached all-purpose flour
• ⅓ C plus 2 T sugar
• 1 t baking powder
• ½ t baking soda
• ½ t salt
• 6 T (¾ stick) chilled unsalted butter, diced
• ½ t grated lemon peel
• ¾ C miniature semisweet chocolate chips
• ¾ C chilled buttermilk
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 t vanilla extract

• Milk or buttermilk (for glaze)

Butter and flour baking sheet. Preheat oven to 400°.

Sift flour, ⅓ C sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into large bowl. Add butter and lemon peel; rub in with fingertips until butter is reduced to size of rice grains. Mix in chocolate chips. Whisk buttermilk, egg yolk and vanilla in small bowl to blend. Add buttermilk mixture to dry ingredients; mix until dough comes together in moist clumps.

Gather dough into ball. Press dough out on lightly floured surface to 8″ round; cut round into 6 wedges. Transfer wedges to prepared baking sheet, spacing 1″ apart. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate.) This is the part I found most irritating. This is an extremely wet dough and will not cut nicely. Here are a couple tips:

• Make this into 8 wedges (easier to cut than 6). The scones will still be plenty big.
• Use a long, flat-edged, thin spatula (if you have one for frosting cakes that would be best) or a long chef’s knife. Dip it in water before each slice.
• Use a wide spatula to move each piece to the baking sheet and then reform it a bit into a triangle. When these cook out, they will lose a bit of their triangular shape, so don’t worry if it’s not perfect.

Brush scones lightly with milk; sprinkle with remaining 2 T sugar. (I used large grain, sugar in the raw for this part so you could actually see the sugar after baking.) Bake until scones are crusty on top and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 18-20 minutes. Serve warm.

Results

This recipe is also very forgiving when swapping out the chocolate chips. For one batch, I used ¼ C chocolate chips and ½ C dried cranberries. I soaked the cranberries in about ½ C orange juice for a few hours. Then, replaced the lemon zest with orange zest. The dough was a bit wetter due to the additional liquid, but they still came out lovely.

Although the recipe says to serve warm, they work just as well the next day. So, these scones have become my go-to recipe for brunch potlucks and work breakfasts where my husband needs to take a dish to pass. Oh, and kids seem to love them even though they’re not as sweet.