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

  1. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Brush scones with heavy cream and sprinkle with coarse white sparkling sugar.
  6. Place scones on the baking sheet and pull the wedges apart a bit, leaving about 1″ space between each wedge.
  7. Preheat oven to 425.
  8. Place the pan of scones into the freezer for 15 minutes.
  9. 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.
  10. Remove the scones from the oven and serve warm.
  11. 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.

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