Cream scones * how to bake with whipping cream

Cream Scones

3 ¼ c all-purpose flour

½ c sugar

1 Tbsp plus 1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

1 c. nuts (or chocolate chips)

1 c. dried fruit

2 c. cold whipping cream

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add one cup of dried fruit (not fresh) and one cup of nuts or chocolate chips.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the cream until froth forms. Fold into the dry ingredients until just combined. Form into one or two balls and pat out on a lightly floured surface until the dough is about an inch thick. Cut into wedges.

Place wedges on greased baking sheets and bake for 17-19 minutes. Makes about two dozen scones.

Welcome to the Real Life Cooking Podcast. I’m Kate Shaw and this week we’re going to learn how to make cream scones! This is another recipe I got from my cousin Molly, and I think she got it from a friend or maybe online. Either way, she calls these “the best scones” and they certainly are.

The reason I don’t make these scones more often is that the recipe calls for heavy whipping cream, and the only time I have whipping cream is when I buy it for a specific recipe. But occasionally I buy it just for making these scones.

Before you start thinking, “Hmm, I bet half and half would work and I’ve got some in the fridge”: no. Nothing works except heavy whipping cream. I know because I have tried everything from half and half to whole milk to evaporated milk, and the result is always a dense, flat mess. If you look at the ingredients, you’ll see that the recipe doesn’t call for butter or any other fat. It needs the fat in the cream to become scones instead of doorstops, and because cream is so light compared to other fats, the scones are light too.

In addition to the heavy whipping cream you’ll need a cup of dried fruit and a cup of nuts. If you can’t eat nuts or don’t like them, you can substitute chocolate chips. Don’t use fresh fruit, though. I like using chopped pecans and dried cranberries, which is the combination you’ll see in photos in the show notes, but chopped walnuts and dried cherries are great too, or whatever you like. I like the texture of the nuts so much that I’ve never tried the recipe with chocolate chips.

You’ll also need two large mixing bowls, or one large and one medium mixing bowl, and some baking sheets. This recipe makes a lot of scones so unless your baking sheets are larger than usual, you’ll probably need two.

First, preheat the oven to 375. Then put the smaller mixing bowl in the fridge to chill. Just trust me on this. Then grease the baking sheets and set them aside. Then make sure your working surface is clean, because these are scones you have to pat out and cut.

In the large mixing bowl, the one that’s not in the fridge, mix the dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. The recipe calls for a lot of baking powder but don’t worry, you won’t be able to taste it. Once you have the dry ingredients mixed up nicely with a fork or whisk, add the fruit and nuts and mix them in too. I actually ran out of all-purpose flour when I made these today, and the new bag of flour in the cupboard that I thought was all-purpose turned out to be bread flour. So I used almost a cup of bread flour to make up the difference. Bread flour is a little heavier than all-purpose so I was worried, but it worked just fine.

Next, it’s time to get the mixing bowl out of the fridge. It should be cool by now, which will help keep the whipping cream cool. Pour the whipping cream into the chilled bowl. If you bought a pint of whipping cream, that’s two cups so you don’t have to measure. Then use a whisk or a fork and beat the whipping cream briskly for about a minute. You’re not trying t