Ingredients
- 3 cups flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
- additional heavy cream for brushing on scones
- coarse sparkling sugar for topping
Directions
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
- Combine the vanilla with 1 1/3 cups cream. Drizzle the liquid mixture over the dry ingredients, tossing and stirring gently all the while. Add enough cream to make a cohesive dough, using up to 3 additional tablespoons if necessary. There shouldn’t be any dry flour in the bottom of the bowl, but the dough shouldn’t be particularly sticky, either.
- Lightly flour a clean work surface. Gently pat the dough into a long rectangle about 3/4″ thick. Cut the dough into 5 equal sections, then cut each section diagonally in half to make 10 triangular scones.
- Brush scones with heavy cream and sprinkle with coarse white sparkling sugar.
- Place scones on the baking sheet and pull the wedges apart a bit, leaving about 1″ space between each wedge.
- Preheat oven to 425.
- Place the pan of scones into the freezer for 15 minutes.
- Bake the chilled scones for 15 minutes, until they’re starting to brown, and they’re baked all the way through, without any wet dough in the center.
- Remove the scones from the oven and serve warm.
- Store cooled scones airtight at room temperature for several days; freeze for longer storage. To refresh, microwave individual scones very briefly; or place scones on a baking sheet, tent with aluminum foil, and reheat in a 350°F oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until heated through.
This is a King Arthur recipe. The only alteration I made is the slicing of the dough to make slightly larger scones.
For a slightly different flavor, sometimes I like to put a little citrus zest into the cream or replace some of the sugar with maple flakes.