It’s time for another Easy Peasy FAST Homemade recipe, and since my friends Bruce and Brenda are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to open an artisan bakery in our home town, I thought this would be the PERFECT time to sucker them out of one of their top-secret recipes. And… bwahahaha… my evil plan worked!
The Pacific Northwest is famous for a few things. Gorgeous evergreens. Pristine mountain lakes. See-through air. A little rain here and there. Weird weirdos who are weird. Blackberries. And scones. In other words, our family loves it here.
Traditionally in these parts, scones are county fair food, served piping hot with blackberry or raspberry jam. And, let me just say… YUM.
I’ve made scones before, usually from the Fisher Fair Scone mix or, in a pinch, from Bisquick, ’cause that’s how I roll with all these kids. Imagine my surprise, then, when Brenda sent me this recipe which took exactly the same amount of time to make scones from scratch, for a total mixing and baking time of 25 minutes. To be honest, I felt a little stupid for using a mix all these years, but that works out well because I asked Bruce and Brenda for a Stupid Easy recipe, and I was planning to publicly malign them for only sending an easy one, but now I know they had faith I’d deliver the stupid part myself. (Psst… they didn’t. They’re nice people.)
This morning, because I care about you and I’m willing to sacrifice myself for the greater good, I made scones. The kids complained, but I carried on. Of course, the kids were complaining about each other and not about the scones, but I say whatever we do while kids complain earns us extra bonus parenting points. Which can be traded for nothing except feeling superior, but sometimes feeling superior is worth it, right? Yes, right.
Anyway. Here for your cooking pleasure are my directions for making scones. Brenda’s directions differ slightly in that they are concise, coherent, and don’t contain ridiculous asides about what to wear while baking, so I’ve offered hers at the bottom of this post in case any of you like things that make sense.
Here we go!
……….
Easy Peasy FAST Homemade Scones
Recipe by Brenda of Newberg Bakery
Superfluousness by Me
Step 1: Scones should always be made while wearing your pajamas. Preferably not attractive pajamas. We’re talking comfort here, not beauty. For example, I like to wear the gray, shapeless University of Washington t-shirt I stole from my dad’s dresser in 1991. The neck is frayed. The color is terrible. There are tiny holes everywhere. And this baby is as soft as Egyptian cotton. Probably. I’ve never felt Egyptian cotton, but I hear it’s soft, man.
You, of course, can wear whatever grody pajamas you want. Sweats or yoga pants are usually a good choice, especially when the inner thighs have worn through. And it’s obviously better if you plan ahead and don’t change out of your pajamas from the night before, especially if you’re making scones for dinner.
P.S. The 1980’s banana-clipped high pony tail is optional but an excellent way to dress up your scone-making ensemble. Highly recommend.
Step 2: Assemble ingredients.
You’ll need:
- 2 c. flour
- 3 Tbsp. sugar
- 2 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 6 Tbsp. unsalted butter
- 1/2 c. milk
Step 3: Mix the dry ingredients and cut in the butter.
I dumped the first 4 things in a bowl and added softened butter. I think you’re supposed to use cold, hard butter; the kind that had a rough childhood and yells at kids to stay off his lawn. But softened butter is way easier to manage. This is probably why my pie crusts suck, but never mind that; softened butter worked fine for these scones and I didn’t have to put up with all the grumbling from the cold, hard butter.
For those of you who didn’t grow up with a mama who taught you these things, here’s how you cut in butter:
You literally cut the butter into the dry mix. Using 2 knives like scissors, one in each hand, cut back and forth through the bowl until the butter and flour form small pea-sized bits. Ta da! Success!
Note: I used salted butter because I think for myself and you can’t tell me what to do. (Also, I really desperately didn’t want to take 1,000 kids to the grocery store for unsalted butter, which I didn’t have.)
Step 4: Add stuff if you want. Brenda recommends 1/2 c. of inclusions like chocolate chips or fresh fruit or white chocolate chips with dried cranberries. That last is one of my favorites. I’m also a huge fan of my sister-in-law’s frosted lemon scones, which she manages to make gluten-free, dairy-free and egg-free because she’s a practitioner of black magic, but I don’t know what all she uses for flavoring other than eye of newt, so I’ll have to figure out a way to bribe her to let us in on her lemon scone secrets another time.
Might I also recommend peach cinnamon scones, chocolate chip scones drizzled with cinnamon honey, candied orange and macadamia nut scones, blackberry lime scones (tiny bit of lime juice + lime rind + fresh blackberries), and/or vanilla scones coated in orange vanilla icing? Yeah. Gonna have to go make more scones right now.
As for me, I made plain scones. I know… what? But seriously, there’s something amazing about the simple original with blackberry jam. They were calling my name, and who am I not to listen to their siren song?
Step 5: Stir in the milk.
Brenda said, “If you need more, add just a bit at a time so as to not make them too sticky to handle.” I needed ~3 Tbsp. more milk than the 1/2 c. the recipe calls for.
The very best part about stirring in the milk is the fact that you need to be sure not to stir too much. Stop stirring when the dough comes together into a slightly crumbly ball. The less you stir, the lighter and fluffier the scones. So basically, the lazier you are, the better this recipe works. Or, put another way, I’m making scones for dinner for the rest of my life.
Step 6: Shape the scones.
Brenda recommends dusting your counter top or cutting board with flour and using that as a surface for shaping your scones. I bypass that entirely because I have a 20-year-old Pampered Chef baking stone that’s so seasoned (read: ugly and wonderful and absolutely nothing sticks to it) that I don’t need a separate surface. I just shape ’em on the place where I’m going to bake ’em.
Shape your dough into a ball and press it down. Then cut scones into 8 equal wedges and place them, separated, on your baking sheet or stone.
Step 7: Bake.
Bake your scones in a preheated 425 degree oven for 18 minutes. Mine were done at 17, so start checking after 15 minutes or so. You’ll know they’re done when they’re golden brown and you can’t stand it; you have to eat them right now.
Step 8: Pull them out and eat them hot.
Yum. Also, yum.
This, in my humble but completely correct opinion, is the Ultimate Pacific Northwest Breakfast. Hot coffee, fresh scones, bowl of blackberries.
Drizzle honey liberally and this = perfection.
……….
Scones:
Brenda’s Real Recipe and Directions
Ingredients:
2 c. flour
3 T. sugar
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
6 T. unsalted butter
1/2 c. milk
Mix the dry ingredients. Cut in the butter.
Add 1/2 c. of inclusions if desired:
Chocolate chips
White chocolate and dried cranberries
Toasted nuts
Fresh fruit
Etc.
Stir in the milk. If you need more, add just a bit at a time so as to not make them too sticky to handle.
Dust board/counter top with flour. Shape dough into a ball. You can either press it down into a circle and cut into halves, then quarters, then 8ths or you can cut the ball in half and make two portions of a total of 16 smaller scones.
Place on baking sheet. Bake in preheated oven at 425 degrees for 18 or so minutes.
……….
You can check out the Newberg Bakery Kickstarter campaign here!
They’re almost 75% funded with 7 days to go.
Every donation of any size helps.
……….
P.S. Guess what my kids were doing while I was making scones?
Did you guess playing nicely in the backyard where I sent them after all of the complaining?
Why, yes! You’re right! That’s exactly where they were.
Except not in our backyard.
Nope.
My 6-year-old boy children and their 6-year-old boy cousin scaled the fence to the neighbors’ yard to hang out with their (granted, super adorable) teenage girls.
Yes, that’s right. Because that’s practically the same thing as, “Go play in the backyard.” I mean, I didn’t specify which backyard was “the,” now, did I?
And our neighbor, being the best neighbor in the history of the world — never, ever cold, hard butter — and shockingly never incensed by the shenanigans of my children or their irresponsible mother or the heinousness of our house/yardkeeping skills, rewarded the littles with Popsicles. And texted me pictorial evidence from her phone.
I’m telling you; it takes a Village. Of course, I’m not sure what our Village is trying to teach our kids, but we have Popsicles and scones, so who cares?
………
37 responses to “Easy Peasy FAST Homemade Scones”
Ok! I’m going to have to give scones another try now! 🙂
Steph
Dear Everyone Who Doesn’t Live in Newberg,
It really is this wonderful. Or better.
Love,
Emily
I’m confused. That’s not an abnormal condition for me, but anyway. . . . I’ve been making biscuits for years and this looks exactly like the way I make biscuits except for the fact that scones are sort of triangular and biscuits are sort of round. Please tell me what the difference is between biscuits and scones. . . .
I just baked (and ate with my husband) my third batch in 2 days. I made plain, cheesy, and chocolate chip. We’re hooked! And I don’t even bake!
I can’t wait to try this scone recipe. I couldn’t find Fisher’s last time I was at the store and finally typed “easy scone recipe” in Google… found one that worked, thankfully… my children LOVE scones… the last ones I did were: lemon blueberry (lemon rind!), white chocolate chip raspberry, and of course chocolate chip. 🙂 It’s easier to keep the fruit frozen until you need to use it in the scone… or else you just keep munching away and your scones end up with no fruit in them because you’ve been “tasting” the entire time…
I’ve been looking all OVER for that T-shirt! I think you owe me some scones.
Thanks to Beth for highlighting the Newberg Bakery and their kickstarter campaign. I gave once, and may do it again! 6 days left, just over $4,000 needed.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/914258835/bring-a-bakery-to-newberg
I make scones all the time, but it’s been a long time since I’ve tried this kind of recipe. I’ll have to give it a try again!
My trick is to put the dry ingredients in the food processor. I cut the butter up into several pieces, drop it in with the dry stuff, and process until the butter is all little pieces. Then dump it in a bowl and move on with the wet ingredients. Sometimes I use the back of a spoon to smoosh the butter bits into the flours, adds to the lovely flakiness, but I don’t usually bother. This is the most lazy way and works quite well for me.
Oh – and another flavored option is triple ginger – candied ginger pieces, ginger powder, and some real grated ginger. It packs a crazy ginger punch!
Yum!
I’ve been kind of looking for a decent scone recipe. Last time I tried to make them they came out flat and tasteless, like pastry, so I haven’t bothered since.
Here in the UK scones are round, so you roll out (or squish down) the dough and then cut them out with a cookie cutter, and then re-roll (or re-squish) the offcuts and cut out some more, which is a bit tedious. I like your American wedge-shaped scones. Squish down, three cuts, and you’re done.
The recipe sounds great! I’ll definitely try them for the next Sunday morning breakfast! I live in Germany and have a really good (and easy) recipe for german scones but it takes 36h and you have to do something with them like every 8h. I’m definitely not able to plan this long time in advance!
Thanks so much for your funny post!!! And good luck for the bakery!
Umm…seriously, this is evil! =)
I just had Twin Rocks calzones for dinner (heavenly) and am stuffed, but this recipe makes me crazy-hungry all over again! Yay for Newberg Bakery, which will make scones even more easy-peasy!
Thanks for supporting Newberg Bakery, Beth. This is what Newberg has needed for a long time and I love the enthusiasm, vision, and creativity of Bruce and Brenda. I have made a donation, I hope your readers will too!
Barb
Instead of cutting in the butter, I go ahead and use cold butter (because I never think ahead and am always like “hey, I should make scones” and then remember that I don’t have softened butter), but I put the dry ingredients and the cold butter in my food processor. It is quick and not a lot of work (until it is time to actually wash the food processor…).
Need some right now please.
So funny. I’ve only ever made scones once, but now I want to try these. I live in hot, dry, Southern California. We have scones, but they’re kind of rare–you get them at Starbuck’s and at a bakery, maybe, if you go to bakeries, which most people don’t do. Your frankness about your life make your posts so fun to read–thanks for keeping it real. And I love, the weird weirdos who are weird, comment. I thought we had a monopoly on that down here in CA–same concept, different weirdos. Anyway, thanks for sharing this recipe.
Beth, do I need to buy you a pastry blender? It will do what the knives do in about an eighth of the time, and you can use cold butter and it doesn’t even matter! They’re only a few dollars….
Also, you are hilarious, and I still remember when you painted my toenails at camp. 😉
I just cut in butter with my hands. I saw it on a cooking show once – I’m thinking Emeril or Alton Brown. They said it was the easiest way, so I’ve been doing it like that ever since.
You can do that with scones, but you should never get your hands in the dough if possible when you’re making pie crust. Also, it’s a lot less messy to use a pastry blender. Keeps the butter off your hands.
Yum! I absolutely prefer “short” scones to those with eggs. So much more flaky! And super fast, and if you freeze them raw, they bake up right from a frozen state and are awesome. Newberg needs a bakery so I don’t have to make my own all the time! Donate! Donate!
This is similar to my recipe except I use whipping cream. So easy though. And instead of dusting with flour I use raw sugar. And I sprinkle a little on top as well. It just adds a little sweetness. And frozen raspberries which are really good but my kids prefer the plain ones. Now I want to make scones!
I just made these scones. Before today, I thought I didn’t even LIKE scones, but I’m working from home today and around 3, I had a snack attack. We don’t keep prepackaged snacks in the house, but I did have white chocolate chips and craisins and I remembered Beth’s recipe, sooooo… OMG. I’ve already eaten two! I’m only counting them as one though, since they were the smallest two on the pan. LOL Anyway, I read your post about the frozen raspberries and immediately though *I* have frozen raspberries… I wonder if I would like those too??? Can you freeze scones? Because my daughter is currently visiting her brother 3000 miles away and I’m pretty sure I don’t need to be eating scones by the panful…
I have not frozen them but I am sure you can (my family always eats them too quickly). I have read to flash freeze them raw, then store in baggies. Then when you want fresh scones, pull them out of the freezer and cook as usual
Can I just say that your neighbors are rad? And I’m super jealous of you for getting to live so close to their rad-ness? We’ve not been so lucky with our neighbors. On one side of my house, I have the cold butter variety. I’m always a little tense when my kids go outside to play, because they are LOUD, man. Like LOUD. And the cold butter neighbors don’t like loud. On the other side of my house, I have a single guy, with a serial killer vibe to him. Seriously. He doesn’t talk to anyone, cringes when you say hi, plays loud music AAAALLLLLL night long, and never, EVER answers his door (the census lady rang MY doorbell to get this guy’s info because he WOULD NOT ANSWER THE DOOR). I keep telling myself he’s just an introvert and really shy, or maybe he’s afraid of girls, or people in general. But he totally creeps me out. So, in conclusion, your neighbors are RAD.
P.S. I’m making those scones this afternoon. I’ll have to change back into my pajamas, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be worth it.
P.P.S. Yes, we ARE currently shopping for a new house, preferably one with rad neighbors that don’t mind when my kids scale their fence on a dragon-hunting expedition. And are also not serial killers.
Nita- Come live by me… I have two LOUD boys… I always feel bad for my neighbors, but then I think “screw it”- it’s either them outside laughing, screaming, and just being LOUD or me hiding in the bathroom with a bottle of wine. Pretty sure the first one will be cheaper on the therapist’s bill later in their life.
Heck, I don’t even LIVE in Newberg and I am supporting the “bring a bakery to Newberg” Kickstarter campaign! Love having the recipe, but sometimes you just want someone else to do the work, you know?
Weird, weirdos who are weird! HAHAHAHAHA!
and oh my—yummy!
I love making scones, and will have to check out the recipe. I hope the Kickstarter campaign is a success–they really seem to have a great idea and the skills to make it happen. Was thrilled to support it. 🙂
Also, scaling the fence to get to the neighbor’s house is 100% part of a great childhood.
Hi, Beth! Thanks for promoting the Newberg Bakery Kickstarter campaign. Although I now live in New York, the 22 years I lived in Newberg were great and Newberg Bakery will make it even better. My parents still live there and I am looking forward to visiting them and Newberg Bakery! I hope your readers will join us to help make Newberg Bakery a reality. It’s the yeast they can do! Here is the link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/914258835/bring-a-bakery-to-newberg
I keep butter in my freezer and when I want to make scones I use my cheese grater to “cut” in the butter.
I don’t know how you do it, but you do! Your Sister In Law may have the magic with cooking, but you have captured the magic of writing! I love reading what you have taken the time to write (and sharing it with my sisters and in laws) because you not only make it entertaining to read (who knew I could laugh and smile so much at a scone recipe) you also manage to make us all feel human again as we read it. My kids may not be the ones scaling the fences (that would be my sister’s children) but it was sure me when I was that age. Thanks for doing what you do!